


We Feel a Little Warmer Now

by PiloteRebelle



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Castaways, Competent Finn (Star Wars), Enemies to Lovers, Graphic descriptions of injury, M/M, No Pretentions of Medical Accuracy, Poe Dameron Whump, There Was Only One Hut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26381632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiloteRebelle/pseuds/PiloteRebelle
Summary: Poe’s ship is shot down in a recon mission gone wrong. He’s captured by a Stormtrooper.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 97
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter 1

_ The cold night takes us to a place to escape the chill _

_ Tucked up somewhere in the woods, on a hill _

_ Wake up feeling the cold in between our toes _

_ Is there a way back? _

_ Nobody knows _

_ And we leave it all behind _

_ Can’t you see we need some time? _

_ And we all sit around the fire _

_ We feel a little warmer now _

-The Woods, by Hollow Coves

He is conscious the entire time.

No, wait. Not quite. He hit his head. Or rather, something hit his head. He remembers that, remembers the impact from the blast just after he slipped below the thin atmosphere, trying to outrun too many TIEs, hoping for a canyon or some rocky mountains on the surface. Something cracking the front of his helmet, snapping the visor and then it was hard to breathe. Wind was whipping through the hole in the transparisteel, or maybe that was just the ship shuddering and spinning, how his head was pulling against his neck as the ship circled, a sickening tailspin, his head was already hurting, it was so heavy, he hit his head. He remembers trying to stay conscious, probably talking, probably narrating the malfunction in the ejection mechanism and his inability to reach the stick and the centrifugal force and the glimpses of the Star Destroyer he saw in split seconds with every rotation until he had to close his eyes, asking for BB-8 to _do something_ (no response), feeling like his neck was going to snap under the pressure and his head _hurt_ -

He opened his eyes again, and there were treetops. Blurry, fast-moving, red-tipped treetops. White figures scattering everywhere, lines of armored ants. How was it that his ship was firing? Oh, the stick. He had the stick, had pulled out of the spin, was trying to set her down, he had forgotten-

The durasteel groaned around him, shuddering, shaking metal. He couldn’t hear BB-8. He couldn’t hear himself, even though he felt his tongue moving. Maybe he was screaming. Maybe he was just trying to breathe. It was still daytime on this side of ( _the seventh planet in the Zathi system, with at least four dozen satellites in orbit. This seems to be an ideal location for the First Order to hide large numbers of troops, with ship numbers and movements even more difficult to calculate due to the strong magnetic-_ )

The trees cushioned the fall, but only slightly. The ship barreled down to the ground, crashing through the boughs. The crunch of the durasteel as the wings ripped off, dragging a tree down with it, and the nose crumpled into the soil. Pain. The harness restraints did their job, he was locked into his seat, upright and eyes open. Just watching as the nose of the ship met the ground, had to see it, couldn’t look away. Watching as it folded up into itself. Watched his leg twist. Pain. His neck, his head, his leg. Maybe he closed his eyes, then.

The cabin immediately filled with thick clouds of dirt and dust and smoke. He coughed, and each subsequent breath filled his lungs with more dirty air, more coughing, more pain in his neck. He rapidly fluttered his lashes, but all he could see was red and brown and pain. Closed his eyes and waited. Shallow breaths. Reminded himself that the pain was only neurons and nerves and dying skin cells. Alive.

“BeeBee-Ate, damage report,” he finally said, barely louder than a whisper.

No response.

“BeeBee?”

No happy beeps. No concerning babble. No pissed off squawking.

He thought about twisting back to check the droid himself, to see if he was still there, maybe an overloaded circuit board or just half-buried in the earth surrounding the ship, but even the thought of moving his spine made him worry that his head would simply fall off. He’d seen pilots decapitated from this kind of crash landing before. Flailing fuel lines, a thin sliver of transparisteel, clotheslined by a strong and persistent tree branch. Maybe he was only conscious because the severed nerves and bone hadn’t fully separated.

“Damage report,” he said again. He forced himself to wiggle his fingers. They moved, though just barely. His toes were more difficult. The left foot was cooperative, after a moment, but the right...now that the dust was settling, his leg hurt more than his head. His leg hurt like a-- _(_ _Language, Commander. ) ( Sorry, General, but I’m pretty sure Motherfucking Bitch is his official rank. )_

He glanced down at his lap. His hands were resting peacefully against his flight suit. Orange. The light on this moon was orange, here on the surface, here under the trees. He wasn’t sure if it was from the sunset or the color of the dust still hanging heavy in the air. He decided to test for accidental decapitation, slowly moving his chin down toward his chest, looking at the offending leg. Even the subtle drag on his vertebrae was agonizing, but he had to see it. See where the crumpled nose of the ship had jarred his right leg into the middle of the cockpit, crushed against the stick when it hit the ground. His leg was not at a good angle. His leg was at a very, very bad angle.

Just above the knee, a strange bulge. Swelling, already? When had his knee gotten so large? Was he delirious? There was something dark there, blackish-red and soggy. 

Poe slowly dragged his fingers down his leg, centimeter by centimeter, back protesting as he leaned forward just enough to reach his knee. There was a small tear in the fabric of his flight suit, where it had snagged on the edge of the control board or the base of the stick. He tore the fabric open a little further, and-

“Fuck.” Oh, fuck. Bone. There was bone. “Fuck, goddamn, motherfucking shit,” there was the hint of white bone peeking out of his thigh, just above his knee, muscle and blood and _bone_ and “Oh hell, oh Force, oh gods-” _Papa, help, I’m sorry, help help help-_

He heard whimpering then, somewhere. Very heavy breathing. Hyperventilating, really. Panic. Neurons and nerves and skin cells. His ship was half-buried in the ground. He was trapped in a crumpled can of soldered metal and smoking wires. BB-8 wasn't functioning. The First Order was...the First Order was still...

“Get up.” He closed his eyes. Tears leaked out of the edges, catching in the dust coating his eyelashes, and he let them. Bone and blood behind his eyelids. “Get up. Now.”

With shaky hands, he unclasped the straps of his restraint harness. One of the metal buckles dropped heavily onto his broken leg, and he screamed. 

***

He woke in mid-air.

He could feel his feet dangling, half-suspended outside the cockpit, half-wrapped around someone’s shoulders with a strong arm locked around his waist, the sound of someone else's breathing, as they climbed off the wreckage of the ship. “Oh thank fuck,” he gasped, letting the tears leak out again. _My leg my leg my leg fix it please fix it it hurts._ “How’d you find me? BeeBee’s down, is he-?”

And then he opened his eyes, and saw a white helmet. He immediately pushed back against the body that held him, a hard shove into that cold, white armor, pure fear, pure instinct. He slipped out of the strong hands and dropped like a stone onto the ground.

***

Someone was taking off his flight helmet when he woke again. His eyes were closed, there was blood in his eyes again, but he could feel his neck being jostled. There was blood in his mouth. He was flat on his back, and his neck hurt like a bitch, it hurt to move, it hurt to-

He opened his eyes. Dark, black, glass ones stared back at him. White helmet.

“No!” he tried to push away again. His leg screamed, and then he screamed. His helmet was ripped away, thrown who knows where ( _What does it matter? You’re about to die._ ) but he kicked with his good leg, and then cried out again as it sent another river of pain up his spine.

“Stop fighting.” A low voice, faintly mechanized. Strong hands gripping both of his shoulders, pressing him down into the earth.

“Fuck you.” He looped his arms under the Trooper’s segmented armor, pushing out against his elbows, trying to unlock the grip, trying to scoot back and away.

The Trooper easily recovered balance, gripping his upper arms more tightly. “Stop fighting!” This time, the order felt less firm, and something closer to worried. “You’re going to hurt yourself!”

The statement was so absurd that Poe stopped struggling and looked at him. Stared into the dark glass eyes of the helmet, tried to see the reflection of the real eyes behind it. He’d never been this close to a Stormtrooper before. ( _You’re about to die._ )

After a few moments of stillness, the Trooper sat back on his heels, resting his hand on the butt of his rifle on the ground. “Don’t make me use this.”

Poe blinked, and let out the breath he was holding. The brief, furious struggle seemed to be all the energy he could muster at the moment. “Do it. I’m not telling you anything.” He couldn’t be sure that was true, of course. He did not want to die. He did not want to be tortured until he begged for death, either. He was already not a little worried that he’d tell them everything the General had ever said to him, sell his mother’s ring, suck Hux’s cock, anything, if they’d just fix his leg, please fix it, please please _please oh fuck it hurts_ -

“Well, I don’t _want_ to shoot you,” said the Trooper. “Do you have a med kit in your ship?”

“What?”

“A med kit.” When Poe didn’t respond, still stunned and confused by the question, the Trooper leaned closer and spoke very slowly. “Medicine? Bandages?”

Poe tried to think of all the ways that this could be a trick, but his brain wasn’t cooperating. “Yeah. Yeah, there’s a kit.”

“Where?” The Trooper straightened up.

“Under the seat.”

“Rations? Water?”

“Same place.”

“Communications array?”

“I disabled it,” he lied. “After I sent a distress signal. Reinforcements’ll be here any minute.” He wondered if false bravado or feigned confidence could ever register as such when he was clearly helpless, flat on his back with blood in his mouth and bone outside his skin. He tried not to think about it. He tried to gather his courage for what was coming next.

The Trooper regarded him for a moment, clearly suspicious, but then he turned toward the still-smoking husk of the ship half-buried in the ground.

Poe set his teeth. Then set them again, harder, grinding the enamel. Then he pulled the collar of his flight suit up into his mouth and bit down hard into the fabric. Three breaths. He twisted onto his stomach from his good leg. He managed to clench enough to catch the nausea and some of the scream when his bad leg scraped across the rocky ground, but not enough, not nearly enough. He dragged himself by his arms two paces toward the trees before he heard footsteps approaching again.

“Kriff off,” he tried to say. When he felt those hands on his shoulders again, he shoved back, let out a yell, throwing his elbow behind him, trying to brace for more pain. All the sudden movements made his vision spin. His stomach heaved. He vomited forcefully onto his arm, coughing and choking a horrible combination of dust and bile and blood, and vaguely heard the Trooper stepping back and sighing, almost like he was disappointed. 

He dragged himself two more paces before the Trooper stopped him again. Or maybe he just collapsed. 

***

He woke up under the trees. They were enormous, with thick trunks and pillowy, soft-looking red bark. The lowest branches soared several meters overhead. They had surprisingly narrow canopies for trees of that size, tapering up to a ragged point. The oldest trees on Yavin IV had sweeping, spherical canopies that could span several meters, though not nearly that tall; dozens of trunks growing together, their bark undulating like a rippling wake. These trees looked armored and wizened and strong, like old warriors.

He no longer had blood in his eyes or his mouth. He could faintly smell the vomit on the arm of his flight suit and the smoke from his ship ( _Is BB-8 burning?_ ) but it seemed further away, and he couldn’t see the wreckage in the narrow field of vision his stiff and aching neck would allow. He was thirsty. His leg hurt. Oh, it hurt. 

“Here,” said a voice.

Poe risked a glance to the side. The white helmet was holding out a canteen. Poe tried to reach out for it, but his neck and back protested, and he quickly collapsed the hand back onto his chest. 

The Trooper leaned closer and roughly tucked the canteen into his hand. Poe drank heavily before his brain even bothered to remind him to be cautious, that it might be poisoned, it might be a trap, _hell, he could have pissed in that and gave it to you as a joke, like those assholes back on-_

But it was water. Slightly warm, not fresh, but water. 

“Don’t drink too much,” said the Trooper. “You’ll just throw it up again.”

“Never eat eggs before a dogfight,” said Poe. “First thing you learn. Rule number one.”

The helmet stared at him. With the blankness of the molded, slightly menacing expression, it could have meant anything. And then, again with that slow tone, almost like talking to a child, “You have a concussion.”

“No shit,” said Poe, closing his eyes and holding out the canteen. “Folks at the Academy used to try it with the newbies at breakfast. Load ‘em up with eggs right before the first flight. You could tell who’d flown for real and who’d just run enough sims to pass the tests.” He smiled to himself. Of all the memories to recall in the moments before his death, he wasn’t sure why he picked that one. A casual, bullying haze. Pride that he’d never fallen for it. His mother had warned him, of course, refusing to feed him that morning ( _“But I’m hungry! Why can’t I eat breakfast?” “It’s a surprise.”_ ), that first morning before his entire life and purpose changed in the seconds after takeoff and, oh hell, and now there was blood in his eyes again, _well, Mama, at least I’ll see you soon._

“You have a concussion,” the Trooper repeated, metal rattling as he recapped the canteen. 

“Little more worried about the kriffing bone sticking out of my leg, if I’m being honest,” said Poe. 

The Trooper didn’t respond to that, and after a few minutes, Poe opened his eyes. The Trooper was crouched onto the ground, cutting down a small stick with a sharp-looking knife, scraping the bark off in neat little strips.

“Stormtroopers whittle now?” And then, as he forced some small conscious thought through the fog of pain and delirium and confusion, “Wait, where’s everyone else?” As far as he could tell, they were alone in the clearing. Just one Stormtrooper. Just him, flat on his back, as close to helpless as he could ever remember being, and one Stormtrooper with a knife. And a blaster. “I had readings there were hundreds of you guys down here. Where’d-- what did-- how--”

The helmet looked up again, briefly, and then back down at his work. “Everyone else is gone.”

“Where’d they go?” _Are they coming back? Why is it just you? Why didn’t they stay to make sure I was dead? Did you get left behind? Is this a trap? (Did you run away?)_ "When are they coming back?"

“They probably think that you died in the crash.”

“Well, you know what they say about when you assume things,” said Poe. That actually seemed to be a highly suspicious, strange course of action. One light fighter, in the middle of a Star Destroyer’s worth of TIE fighters and Stormtroopers, and they didn’t attempt to capture his equipment? Confirm his death? That didn’t make any sense at all. But he wasn’t the strongest tactician, even without a concussion and a bone sticking out of his leg, and he decided to file it away for later consideration. There certainly didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it at the moment.

The Trooper shifted slightly, and Poe’s jaw clenched when he saw a number of items laid neatly onto the ground next to him. The open med kit, with pills and bandages, scissors and gauze, were all lined up on a little tarp. Next to that were two straight-ish tree branches, one longer than the other, shed of their needles and bark, and some long lengths of vine. The wide, heart-shaped leaves of the vine were stacked in a little pile near the bandages. 

“Oh hell no,” said Poe, feeling the blood drain out of his face as he realized what the Trooper was planning to do. “You can’t be serious.”

Again, the Trooper didn’t respond. 

“My guys will be here any minute.” Poe tried to control the racing of his heart. _What the fuck what the kriffing fuck is he insane?_ He shifted away, even though his upper back protested, feeling extremely panicked as the Trooper came nearer, shifting the tarp of supplies within arm’s reach. “Wait a minute. Just wait. Just--” he threw a hand out, stopping just shy of the hard plastoid armor protecting the Trooper’s chest. “I’m a Commander, okay? I’m kind of a big deal in the Resistance. I’m Poe, Poe Dameron, I’m the kriffing Starfleet Commander, they’ll be looking for me. They’ll be here any minute and then there’ll be doctors, you don’t have to-”

“You can’t have contacted anyone,” the Trooper said calmly. “All communication frequencies outside the Order were jammed for this exercise. Standard procedure.”

( _“What do you mean, comms are jammed? Get a message back to Base, there’s twice as many ships as we thought there’d be-”_

_ <I am unable to reach the Resistance on any channel, encrypted or not!> _

_“Okay, we’ve got to find a place to hide until we can figure out what they’re up to here.”_

_ <Extremely stupid idea! Initiating jump sequence immediately!> _

_“No! We’ve got to finish the recon, this build up is way too close to the Ileenium System to be a coincidence. They’re planning something and I’m not leaving here until I figure out what. Is there enough magnetic interference around that proto-moon to give us cover?”_

_ <Running scan.> _

_“Shit! They’ve spotted us. Punch it, Bee!”_

_ <Initiating jump sequence!> _

_“No! We can at least take out one of those Destroyers. That’ll slow their evac, give us time to get reinforcements and clear this out. Keep trying to reach the Resistance, I’ll worry about the-”)_

“You were the only ship,” the Trooper continued. “You were spying on us, right?”

Poe set his jaw, trying not to grind his teeth. His head hurt enough as it was. “My droid can send encrypted distress signals even in low power mode, he-”

“Your droid’s fried,” the Trooper interrupted. “I think it got hit. Or maybe an overloaded motivator, but I don’t really know anything about droids.” 

“That’s too bad,” said Poe. “They’re pretty great.” _That one was. Greatest droid in the universe. Damn it._ His heart was sinking. _Sorry, Bee. I’m so sorry._

The Trooper was staring at him again, like he didn’t quite know how to respond. Then he gestured down at the tarp of supplies. “It might take me a couple days to construct a communicator to-- to contact-- They’ve probably already left the system. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave your leg like that for very long.”

Poe laughed then. He couldn’t help it. “Why not?”

“Because you could die?”

“They’re just going to torture me.”

“I told you, I’m not going to torture you.”

“ _They_ will. You’re going to fix my leg in the middle of a goddamn forest like you’re Kade Genti, just for them to throw me in an interrogation chair and peel my skin off. Or break my other leg, and make me watch it.” He shook his head, another dark chuckle. “Bet Hux’s into that.”

“You’re my prisoner,” said the Trooper, though he sounded hesitant. He busied himself with the sticks again. “I will do my duty.”

Poe’s hope caught on that hesitance and he tried to force his creaky, nerve-addled brain to hold it, _plan, plan, think of a plan, how can you use that?_ But the fear was quickly outpacing his limited tactical capacity. “Can you at least knock me out before you do whatever you’re gonna do? S’gotta be something in that kit. Or you can stun me. Or something. Anything, just knock me out.”

No response. The Trooper was pulling off the small white plates over the back of his hands and tugging on the black tip of each finger of his gloves. 

“Please?” he looked over, trying not to plead, trying not to expect anything from that blank helmet, but hope, _hope_. “At least take that damn helmet off. It’s kriffing creepy. Do you even-”

He stopped abruptly. The Trooper had pulled off his helmet. Perhaps he was going to anyway, perhaps that had always been his intention, but either way, the helmet was off, and Poe was staring at quite possibly the loveliest-looking man he’d ever seen. He was much younger than Poe had expected from the calm assuredness in his voice and the poise of his shoulders. Dark skin, richly toned and glowing a little in the purple twilight of the late afternoon. Dark eyes. Soft, full lips. Thick, curly black hair, cut very short. He really did look nervous. Nervous, and determined, a little distant, a little sweaty. He refused to look Poe in the eye, seemed extremely uncomfortable with the piercing gaze Poe knew he was fixating on him, but he’d never seen a Stormtrooper this close, without the helmet, and did he look _sad_? And very nervous.

“Um...I, uh…” the Trooper stammered, and Poe could see his cheeks tint, slightly darker. “I have to take off that suit. Or I could cut it, but...uh…”

His uncertainty was infectious, and Poe felt himself blushing, too. “I don’t have anything else to wear.”

“Right. And it gets pretty cold here, after dark,” the Trooper nodded. And then, after another moment’s hesitation, he crouched down and gestured at Poe’s feet. “I think it would hurt less just to pull it off this way.”

“Whatever,” said Poe, biting his lower lip so hard he could taste iron. He couldn’t decide if it was more or less humiliating that the Trooper didn’t actually seem to be trying to humiliate him. Seemed to be embarrassed and uncertain about undressing him, that strange intimacy of his flight suit unzipping from his neck to his lower belly, slowly sliding his bare arms and legs out of the suit, in an open clearing, in broad daylight, (his hands were warm, and rough), lying on the ground wearing only his undershorts and layer tank, ten meters from the smoldering wreckage of his ship with the fried-out husk of his best friend still trapped in the socket in the back, and- “Why are you doing this?”

“Your leg is broken.”

“Yeah, but…” 

“Do you want to die of blood poisoning?” The Trooper looked at him then. “Or an infection?”

Poe forced himself to smile. “That’s what the blaster’s for.”

“And what do you think will happen to me when they find out I’ve shot Poe Dameron, Starfleet Commander of the Resistance?”

“They don’t know you’re here,” said Poe. _Plan! Plan, a motherfucking plan!_ “What if, and just hear me out, what if we don’t contact the First Order? What if we contact the Resistance? They left you here on this rock, right? They just left you behind! Maybe they think you’re dead, or-- or they did this on purpose, or...I don’t know how they work, but I know they’re cruel and heartless bastards and you don’t...seem...quite...like that...” 

No response. The ground was cold, pine needles scratching his skin. The Trooper actually draped the empty suit over his upper body, which drew Poe’s eyebrows down over his nose. He wasn’t sure if it was for modesty or for warmth, but it was a nice gesture, and when the hell had a goddamn Stormtrooper ever made a nice gesture? Maybe this was all a hallucination. After all, his head was throbbing. His leg hurt. The Trooper hadn’t responded to his offer of escape. Maybe this was all an elaborate trick. He tried to think through any possible option he had to get away, but the blaster was too far, he wouldn’t get to it. He couldn’t do anything. 

The Trooper wet down a piece of gauze with some antiseptic and kneeled over Poe’s bad leg, trapping his ankle firmly between his knees. “This will hurt.”

“Already does.” Poe didn’t try to stop himself from crying out at the stinging in his wound as the Trooper cleaned it, at how his muscles ached when the Trooper held his leg firmly in place. The cleaning took a long time, Poe hissing through his teeth and repeatedly forcing his watery eyes open.

“This will hurt more,” said the Trooper when he finally tossed the gauze aside and pressed his bare hands to either side of Poe’s thigh. Slowly, he shifted the bone back into place, bracing here, applying pressure there, and Poe’s whimpers raised into a loud, echoing scream as the bone slowly slipped back under his skin and back into some semblance of its proper place. By the time it was done, he was heaving and drenched in sweat; the Trooper was, too. “Better?”

“Yeah, actually,” said Poe, a little breathless. It still hurt like a bitch, but it was indeed better - possibly even just psychologically, knowing the bone was back inside his body, where it belonged. “Are you a medic or something?”

“No. We don’t have those.” The Trooper was cleaning the wound again, quick and efficient.

“Uhh, so who patches people up in the field?” said Poe. “So they can get to a doctor?”

The Trooper paused, and then repeated, “We don’t have those.”

_Fuck you, First Order_ , Poe tried to swallow his disgust. “Then how’d you learn to do this?”

“I’ve never done this before.”

“Seriously?” Poe raised his head a little, watching him smear half a tube of Bacta gel over the laceration. It was cold, and slimy, and soothing. ( _It’s going to heal like this, what if you still can’t walk, what if they have to break it again anyway once you get back to the-_ ) “I wouldn’t have the first clue how to set a bone.”

“There’s a survival manual, for senior officer duty,” said the Trooper. “I’ve read it a few times.”

“What do you mean for senior officer duty?”

The Trooper was looking confused again. “For the senior officers?”

“If it's for senior officers, then why did you read it?”

“No, it was for Troopers.” Now he was wrapping gauze around his leg. Efficient and methodical, but it was impossible to escape how intimate it felt to have those warm, rough, stranger’s hands sliding over his upper leg.

“But you don’t have medics.” And then Poe made a guess. “Wait, are you only allowed to do this stuff for a senior officer? Is that what you’re saying?”

Again, the Trooper looked at him with a combination of confusion, defensiveness, and that hint of sadness. He didn’t answer. Poe didn’t press further.

Poe soon learned exactly what all the different sticks were for, as the Trooper rigged up a combination of splint and traction device, twisting the tiniest stick around a piece of vine to slowly pull Poe’s leg into a proper position and using the rest of the vines to wrap it all together. Again, it was a painful process, but it was nowhere near what it was before. Though maybe he had the second rush of adrenaline to thank for that, for now. _Plan, plan, think of a motherfucking plan._

None came to him. It was especially hard to think clearly when the Trooper crouched even closer, resting one hand on the side of his face to clean the bloody mess off his forehead. 

“What hit you?”

“Don’t know.” Poe tried not to meet his eyes. Dark brown. Close to black, close to limitless, close to deep space and dark matter. Too close, much too close. “Piece of the cockpit maybe.” He closed his eyes. More cold slime, the softness of clean gauze.

“I meant your ship.”

“Oh. Too many TIEs. Was trying to hit the surface cannons, and...” he tried to shrug.

“You took on an entire Star Destroyer and its TIE fleet? By yourself?” The Trooper sounded more amused than aghast.

“Didn’t have much other choice.”

“You couldn’t jump away?”

“Nah,” Poe shook his head, and then had to take several deep breaths to keep himself from vomiting again. “I don’t run away.”

The adrenaline was fading, and a swell of exhaustion and pain rolled in to replace it. There was a very loud bird singing in the tree above him. A light, lilting melody. Cheerful, almost. The sweat had dried into a chilly, clammy film on his forehead and behind his knees, mixing with the dirt. His head was throbbing, something in his leg was tingling and burning now, maybe burning out an already-building infection, his neck and shoulders aching, everything hurt really, everything, and-

“Here,” said the Trooper, startling Poe into opening his eyes. He was standing at arm’s length, holding out three pills and the canteen again.

Poe immediately swallowed them with another gulp of water. “What’s your name?”

“FN-2187,” said the Trooper, recapping the pill bottle and packing all the medical supplies back into the kit.

“F-- Wait, FN what?”

“2187.”

“FN-2187?”

“Right.”

“That’s a stupid name,” said Poe.

The edges of the Trooper’s mouth moved, slightly. “Only name they ever gave me.”

_Well, I ain’t using it_ , he wanted to say. Nearly said. But he stopped himself. “Well,” he said instead, “I’ll take this back the second they start pulling my fingernails off, but thank you, FN-2187.”

FN-2187’s eyebrows twisted down, as barely perceptible as the hint of smile had been. “Are you hungry?”

“No,” Poe shook his head weakly. He looked back up at the trees, watching the branches sway gently in the wind. He could hear the bird again, but he couldn’t see it. His leg hurt. His head hurt. His shoulders hurt. _Don’t forget: you are going to die soon._ He closed his eyes.

***

It was dark, and Poe was shivering. 

His neck and shoulders were so sore he could barely move his head without significant pain, but compared to the pain in his leg, he could have done somersaults all the way back to D’Qar. His leg was positively _pulsing_ with pain, sharp, throbbing, stinging, hot and sweaty and shivering and cold, so cold, and he barely registered that he was whimpering again, more like moaning, maybe more like crying again, _I am going to die soon. Here. Here, soon. Papa, I’m sorry._

A bare hand on his forehead. The hand was warm, the skin rough with callouses. Vaguely familiar. There was movement, and the sudden brightness of a torch, and the sounds of the med kit being opened.

Poe closed his eyes and shivered. He clutched the flight suit, still slung around his shoulders, but his legs were bare, still wired in the tree branch contraption, and he was _so cold_. 

“Take these,” said FN-2187, his voice hoarse and quiet from sleep. He put the pills directly in Poe’s hands, but Poe was shivering too much to do more than hold them tightly. It hurt to raise his head. It hurt to move anything.

Then an arm was sliding under his shoulders and lifting him, slightly, just enough to tilt his head up. FN-2187 took the pills out of his hand and dropped them in his mouth, one by one, and held the canteen at his lips for him to drink. _Why are you so handsome?_ Poe wanted to ask. It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. The hard plastoid of the armor was cold and stiff under his back. _I don’t want to die. I should die now. Later will be worse. I don’t want to die._ He only managed to force out the first word of the question, of many questions. “Why?”

FN-2187 pulled him more upright, rustling with the flight suit to tuck under his back, a warm layer against the cold ground. Then he gently lowered him down. Gently, so gently, he worked Poe’s arms back inside the suit, where it was warm. Then his good leg. It was a little awkward, to be half-in and half-out, and Poe was still shivering uncontrollably, but it helped. If nothing else, there was a comfort in its familiarity. 

The Trooper reached to the side and unwrapped a tightly-bound emergency blanket, draping the crinkly foil over Poe, tucking it around his shoulders and under his legs. “I don’t know,” he said finally, just when Poe had forgotten he asked the question.

_Why_? Poe wanted to ask again, but he was shaking. He was still so tired. He was so confused. Force, it hurt.

The hand was on his forehead again. “You have a fever,” said FN-2187. 

“Shock,” said Poe through chattering teeth. “Or an infection already.”

“Probably the concussion,” said FN-2187.

“I don’t remember,” said Poe. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was trying to remember, but everything before and after setting his leg felt fuzzy and far away. “I want to go home.”

FN-2187 didn’t answer. He turned off the torchlight, and his dark shadow lay back down. Near Poe, almost too near. “I’ll try to make some shelter in the morning.”

“I’ll be rescued soon,” said Poe. Knowing it wasn’t true. Knowing it was a lie. “They’ll come for me. They’ll find me.”

FN-2187 was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Poe started to feel the tips of his fingers again, that the pain medication started to push the roaring maw of pain, pain, pain back into merely a deeply uncomfortable ache. “Maybe,” said FN-2187. “Maybe they will.”

Poe fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

The pain in his leg woke him early; or maybe it was that damn bird whistling overhead, far too cheerful for the chill in the air and the bluish tint to the pine needles. His leg was throbbing and he drifted, letting his eyes close, trying to chase unconsciousness again. 

But the next refrain of birdsong was just similar enough to one of BB-8’s < _ You’re late!> _ screeches that he jolted up with a gasp. He immediately regretted it; his upper back and neck were still stiff and agonizingly sore. After he reoriented ( _ crash, leg, head, Trooper, stranded _ ), he spent a moment trying to stretch, gently shifting his neck a barely-perceptible tilt from side to side, but he gave it up fairly quickly.

The clearing was empty; FN-2187 was nowhere to be seen within his limited view. Cool, silver mist was lingering in the lower boughs of the trees overhead, a thin layer of damp dew coating everything on the ground. His feet were icy-cold, even in his thermal socks, tucked in the emergency blanket. Poe saw that the med kit had been placed within arms reach, zipped closed but with a bottle of pills on top. The canteen was placed next to the kit. He managed to get himself upright and swallowed several painkillers with a large gulp of water from the canteen, considering but deciding against sacrificing some of that water to wash the back of his neck. He had rarely felt so grimy, between the sweat and blood and dirt, all crusting under his vomit-smelling flight suit and pine needles in his hair.

“At least it isn’t Hoth,” he muttered to himself, folding up the emergency blanket to inspect his leg wound. His father had said Hoth was the single-worst planet he had ever seen, though Poe always took that with a large crystal of salt. (His father put on a jacket when the temperature dropped below 20°C.) “Could be worse. Could be Hoth. Could be kriffing Rodia.” He did not want to think about trying to manage all this in a swamp. At least this forest didn’t seem to be heavily populated with night-hunting carnivores.

He was unsuccessfully attempting to haul himself to his feet when he heard rustling in the underbrush, but he wasn’t really in a position to defend himself if it was a predator. All he could do was try to hold steady enough to get his legs under him.

“Where exactly are you trying to go?” FN-2187’s voice came from behind him, sounding both exasperated and amused. “I can’t leave you alone for two minutes.”

“I gotta take a piss,” said Poe through gritted teeth, barely pulling his good leg under himself before he grunted down the pain and collapsed onto his knee. His neck hurt too much to move like that, to say nothing of his kriffing leg. He tried not to cry, or spit, or return to that horrible position of helplessness on his back (he managed to avoid two out of the three). 

“Yeah, I was wondering how that was going to work,” said FN-2187. The heavy litter of pine needles in the clearing made for soft footfalls as he walked toward him, but Poe could feel light tremors through the palms of his hands.

“I can do it.”

“You really can’t.” Those strong, solid hands again, gripping him around the ribs, just under the shoulders, pulling him up. 

Poe allowed himself to wince and groan a little as he leaned into the Trooper, trying to support his weight on his good leg, maybe this was the long-term humiliation technique, let him think he was going to make it to a tree and then piss himself while tangled in this ridiculous tree branch contraption…

But FN-2187 just tucked his arm around Poe’s back and started taking small, tentative steps toward the enormous redwood at the edge of the clearing. “I guess this means you’re not dehydrated.”

Poe laughed, couldn’t help himself, and then hissed as his muscles tensed to bear weight and the pain traveled up his back. “I could be bleeding out my ears and still need to piss first thing in the morning.”

“Hopefully not out your ears.”

He laughed again, and then groaned. “Stop it, everything hurts.”

“Sorry.”

“Why are you still wearing that stupid helmet?”

“It’s comfortable,” said FN-2187.

“Really?”

“No, of course not,” he said, clearly smirking.

“You’re pretty weird, you know that, FN-2187? Did you find some hallucinogenic berries for breakfast or something?”

“I haven’t seen any berries,” said the Trooper, and it was such an honest, guileless answer that Poe felt something catch inside. ( _ Oh no. Don’t you dare. _ )

Poe braced one hand on the enormous tree trunk as he shifted away from FN-2187, instinctively curling his shoulders around himself for some privacy while he adjusted the half-zipped flight suit and his undershorts. FN-2187 stepped a few paces away. When Poe managed to glance slightly over his shoulder, he saw that the Trooper had turned around completely. He didn’t have his blaster. Poe had a brief, half-formed thought of tackling him in some sneak attack, but then what? The blaster might as well be miles away, for all he could get to it or the remains of his ship. 

“So what’s the plan?” he asked, trying to sound more casual than panicked by his lack of options.

“I found a stream nearby, for water,” said FN-2187, still facing away from him. “Seems clean enough. We have enough food for five or six days, more if we go to half-rations.”

“We?” Poe couldn’t help himself from blurting out. He shifted slightly in the underbrush and nearly tripped on an enormous wide-leafed fern which had gotten tangled up in the vines wrapped around his leg.

Within seconds, FN-2187 had an arm under his shoulders again. “You’re my prisoner, right?” and Poe couldn’t entirely tell whether there was sarcasm in his voice or not. The helmet blocked his facial expression, and the mechanization from his voice flattened any nuance.

“Right.” Poe swallowed carefully, gritting his teeth as they limped back to the clearing with their supplies. “So that’s a ‘No’ on the Resistance?”

The Trooper waited a moment, just long enough that Poe thought he was considering the suggestion, but instead he asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Poe. He waited until FN-2187 had propped him up against the trunk of a much smaller tree, head pillowed by the bark that was much rougher than it looked. “But I need a kriffing doctor, man. This is-- I’m grateful. Really, I am. You could have let me die, and I hear you saying you’re not going to torture me, but it’s not going to do me much good without a real doctor, and they really  _ are _ going to torture me if you hand me over, so…” He stopped as the Trooper handed him a ration bar. “Thanks.”

FN-2187 pulled off his helmet and set it on the ground, next to his blaster, and then quietly unwrapped his own ration and devoured it quickly. Poe was again struck by how extremely, distractingly, extraordinarily handsome he was. “There’s a lot of woody debris near the stream, and some pieces of your ship I can use to make a shelter.”

“Good plan,” Poe nodded, and then winced at the sharp pain in his neck. “Last night was cold as a Jedi’s left tit.”

FN-2187 looked confused.

“S’just an expression,” said Poe. (It wasn’t.)

“You talk a lot.”

“Yeah,” Poe agreed. “How far’s the stream?”

“About a klick that way, maybe two.”

“Oh.” Poe looked down at his leg. It was terribly swollen, the bandages nearly saturated with sticky-red blood and the rest of his skin mottled with bruises under the engine smoke and dirt.

“We’ll take it slow,” said the Trooper, popping the last bite of ration in his mouth and scooping up the med kit. 

“We?” Poe asked again.

“Can’t leave you here. You keep running off.” There was a small twist to his mouth as he said it. He knelt down at Poe’s feet and busied himself with changing the bloody bandages.

Poe watched with interest as the wound on his leg was exposed. It was still raw and weeping, bruised in a kaleidoscope of colors, but the bone seemed to be staying inside where it belonged. FN-2187 cleaned it again, reapplied the bacta gel, re-bandaged the wound, and then did the same thing for his forehead.

“You’ve got a pretty bad shiner. Don’t blame me, okay?” He smiled, and it was a real smile, not quite showing teeth but warm, so warm, warm like a fever ( _ Oh don’t you dare) _ , and Poe barely felt the pain as his fingertips lightly touched the bruising around his eye and cheek.

“Buddy, I’m gonna lie my ass off on this report,” said Poe. “Gonna write how I took out a whole squadron and two Destroyers by myself, and then landed the ship with my eyes closed and freed the native inhabitants of this planet from the First Order, and discovered a magic mushroom that brings peace to the galaxy-”

“Still got that concussion, huh?” FN-2187 interrupted him with a light chuckle. His laugh was deep and sparkling, and the new smile was wide and bright, and Poe definitely felt something catch this time. That smile lit up his entire face. 

“Yeah, let’s go with that,” said Poe, looking into the trees behind him. ( _ What is  _ _ wrong _ _ with you!? He’s a  _ _ Stormtrooper. _ _ ) _

“How’s your neck?” The Trooper poured pills from a different bottle into his hand (something for the swelling, Poe assumed, but didn’t bother to ask) and passed them over. Their fingers tangled slightly in the transfer.

“Awful.”

“Anything broken?”

“In my neck!? Force, I hope not,” Poe gingerly tested the pain as he tried to move his head from side to side again. Then he dry-swallowed the pills in one handful. “What’s got you so cheerful this morning?”

“What, just because I’m stranded on a deserted planet with enemy leadership, I can’t be in a good mood?” 

“I’ve never seen a happy Stormtrooper.”

“How would you know? We’re always wearing helmets.”

“Yeah, are those supposed to make you look scary or something? Cause they don’t work. You usually just look confused.” Poe made an approximation of the open-mouthed ‘Duh’ expression he always read in those molded plastoid helmets.

FN-2187 chuckled again. “Maybe we are, most of the time. How would you know?”

“Gimme,” Poe’s hand was out, waggling his fingers, before he could stop himself.

“You want my helmet?” FN-2187 raised an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, let me try it on.”

“Why?”

“I’ve always wondered what they looked like inside. I mean, your visibility must be awful.”

He snorted. “You really want to test me on that one?” 

“We could have ourselves a little bet. Winner gets the galaxy?”

FN-2187 laughed again. He shook his head, seemingly amused by the audacity, and scooped the helmet into the crook of his elbow. For a moment, Poe thought he was actually going to hand it over, but instead he slid it back over his own head. “I should get started.”

“What?”

The Trooper nodded slightly in the direction of Poe’s ship, and Poe’s heart sank.  _ BeeBee-Ate _ .

“The droid, in my ship…?” Poe began haltingly.

“What about it?”

“Can you...can you get him out of there? Maybe I can fix him.” Poe stared into the vacant space of the ground, trying to categorize what tools and equipment could be salvaged from the ship, whether he could make necessary repairs to bring the droid back online.  “He’s...he’s kind of really important to me. We’ve been through a lot together. I’ve had him a long time, and he’s...he’s special. Would you do that?”

FN-2187 was looking at him again. “You must think I’m pretty stupid, huh?”

“What?” Poe startled. It was a stark shift in demeanor. FN-2187 continued to stand straight and solid, no menacing slouches, no tensing of his shoulders, but there was a hardness in his voice that reminded Poe exactly who he is, _ this is a soldier, this is the First Order, don’t pretend he’s something else, do not forget you will die soon.  _ “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“It’s a droid.” FN-2187 shouldered his blaster and tossed a canteen to bounce and then roll within Poe’s reach. “Look, we don’t have to be rude to each other or anything, but you’re Commander Poe Dameron of the Resistance and I wa-- am the Squad Leader of the FN Battalion of the First Order. I will do my duty. But that doesn’t mean letting you access and repair communication or weapons systems. I’m not stupid.” 

And before Poe could protest, or find a way to explain that both were true, that he deeply cared about the droid and that he wasn’t trying to trick him, not necessarily ( _ Why am I trying to justify myself? Of course I want to escape, of course I want to get out of here… _ ), FN-2187 stalked off into the trees.

***

FN-2187 was gone a long time.

Poe dozed at first. But there were no comfortable positions; the rough bark, the hard ground, the constant throbbing ache from his forehead down to his leg. Even his good leg felt sore from bruising and overuse; his elbows, his hips. After it became clear that the Trooper would not be returning anytime soon, Poe managed to scoot himself over to the med and ration kits, zipped neatly in the center of the clearing, and inspected the contents. Everything was perfectly organized, exactly ordered. Even the little tarp was perfectly folded back into a compact square, corners sharp. Poe wasn’t sure whether to be freaked out by the precision or find it neurotically cute. (He chose not to let himself answer the question.) 

Even though his stomach growled, he decided against taking another ration bar. FN-2187 had clearly portioned out the food evenly, and Poe agreed with his assessment on the extent of their food stores. They had only been designed for one pilot, after all, and now they would need to be shared. He did take more painkillers once the aching started to spike into sharpness again, and didn’t care how much time had actually passed since his last dose. If he ran out, so be it.

He managed to get himself back to the tree, resting his head against the bark and trying not to move, dozing again. The active part of his brain kept trying to encourage him to rally, to think of a plan, to be ready to act fast when FN-2187 came back, but he was just too tired to do more than let the thoughts drift and breathe through the anxiety swirling in his empty stomach.

Eventually, he started to notice his surroundings with a sharper eye. The light was a pleasant golden-yellow at this time of day, shining through the gaps in the trees to dapple sunlight and pale warmth over the clearing. The little bird came back to the clearing soon after, lighting on small branches or large rocks and trilling a song full of complex melodies and lilting key changes. Poe watched it for a long time. It was small and brown, with a short stub tail and a tiny beak. Utterly uninteresting. Poe couldn’t say he’d ever noticed a single bird on D’Qar, but Yavin IV’s bird life was vibrant and colorful, impossible to ignore even though he’d never had the slightest interest in birds. Still, the more he listened, the more he thought this drab little bird on Zathi VII had one of the most beautiful, cheerful little songs he’d ever heard. It hopped about on the rock, bobbing its head up and down, sounding friendly, chatty, flitting around and fanning its little fail. It reminded him of BB-8 when the droid was in a particularly chipper mood.

And then the bird scooped a tiny beakful of the furry-green moss that covered the north side of the rock at the edge of the clearing, and flew straight into a teardrop-shaped bundle of moss dangling from the end of a large pine branch. It disappeared inside. Poe perked up, forcing his aching neck to crane forward, squinting his eyes to the point of tears to see clearly. After a few moments, the bird flew out of the little moss teardrop and back to the rock, and sang again.

Poe was, quite simply, delighted. He couldn’t remember ever feeling quite this elated over a kriffing bird before. Almost on cue, he heard loud crunching in the undergrowth from heavy boots traipsing through the trees, and the bird flew away.

“Aw, you scared it,” said Poe, giving FN-2187 a slightly pouty look when he appeared at the edge of the clearing.

“Scared what?” The Trooper dropped his armful of ship components, wires and all, directly into a large billowing fern and directed his blaster into the trees ahead. “What is it?”

“There’s a bird building a nest over there,” Poe pointed at the branch. “See? That little ball of moss?”

He could feel the Trooper’s irritation radiate across the clearing. “A bird?”

“Yeah, a tiny little one,” said Poe, trying to get a better look under the larger branches without moving his head too much. “It’s been flying around singing and then carrying little bits of moss into the-”

“Yeah, okay, very funny,” FN-2187 said grumpily. He bent down and gathered all the pieces back into his arms, crossed the clearing to pile them next to the med kit and ration box, and hunted through them with the same methodical, practiced care he seemed to use for everything.

“Need some help, there, buddy?” asked Poe. 

“No,” said FN-2187. He counted the pieces again, crossed the clearing once more to inspect the fern for any stray items, and then came back to collapse on his knees next to the ration box. When he removed the helmet, his face was drenched in sweat. 

“Is it lunchtime?”

FN-2187 answered by tossing him a ration bar, and then shifting to sit cross-legged as he unwrapped and devoured his own.

“How’s the ship?”

“Broken.”

“How’s BeeBee-Ate?”

A look, somewhere on the border between intrigued and annoyed.

“My droid. BeeBee-Ate. One of a kind, orange and white, you’ve never seen a BB unit like him before. I got him from a-”

“I’m  _ eating _ ,” said FN-2187, taking another enormous bite of the bar.

“And I’ve been sitting here all day bored out of my concussed skull,” Poe returned, slowly unwrapping his ration and eyeing it as the hunger and the nausea battled for supremacy of his stomach. “Seriously, though, my droid. Is he okay? Did you look at him? I get it, you don’t want me fixing him, but maybe you can fix him? I can give you instructions, you can-- He’s special, he’s one of-”

“One of a kind, you said.”

“What happened to your good mood?”

“That was before I spent hours trying to disconnect the directional transceiver.”

“Oh yeah, that thing’s a bitch to remove,” said Poe, chewing thoughtfully. “Did you use the exo-glove?”

“The what?” FN-2187 stared at him.

“The exo-glove,” said Poe. Then, after a beat, he busted into laughter, doubling over his stomach. “Oh! Oh no, did you use the hexdriver? Ohhhh you poor bastard. That’s not a mistake you’ll make twice.” He laughed harder. “Please tell me you didn’t do the same thing for the KAD unit.”

FN-2187 clenched his jaw, but said nothing.

Poe was nearly resting his forehead on his good knee now, bent over and not entirely capable of pulling himself upright again without pain. The laughter was making his vision spin and his shoulders scream, but his droid was dead and he was alone. “Oh Eff-Enn,” he exaggerated the wiping of tears out of his eyes. “Buddy, I needed that.” He trailed off into giggles.

"Glad I could amuse you."

"Hey, you could have just asked for my help."

"Right, sure," FN-2187 rolled his eyes.

"I kind of owe you a favor, don't I?"

FN-2187 fixed him with a stern look, but chose not to say anything and popped the last bite of ration bar into his mouth. After a moment of silent chewing, "Would you-"

Poe rolled the canteen toward him, and he caught it nimbly. There was a pause.

"Thanks."

"Sure." Poe examined his leg again. 

"How is it?"

"Hurts like hell, but doesn't seem to be bleeding as much."

"Gotta pee?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

They repeated the exercise from the morning, the delicate truce required for touching and supporting weight. Poe felt exhausted again as soon as he was re-deposited in his spot next to the redwood tree, and again let himself rest heavily against the rough bark.

"Okay. I'm going to work on the communicator," said FN-2187, without much enthusiasm.

Poe tried to keep quiet; tried to keep the precarious balance of their currently-amiable relationship, keep some pseudo-trust and options open. But it became very apparent very quickly that, as talented as FN-2187 was with fixing broken bones and bandaging injuries, he did not have the same gifts with communications technology. “Nope, don’t do that, it’ll-”

“Ouch!” FN-2187 yelped, fanning his burnt fingertips and scowling at the device in his lap. “How did it shock me? It doesn’t have any power.”

“Fuel cells in the solar plate.”

“Well, how am I supposed to connect the transceiver?”

“Oh, is that what you’re trying to do?”

FN-2187 gave him a very grumpy look. “What else would I be doing with this and this?” as he held up the two small pieces of metal.

“I mean,” Poe wrinkled his nose, “You’re pretty much making a piece of whirring durasteel art if you don’t have the orbital relay booster.”

FN-2187 stared at him. “What.”

“That communicator won’t work without the-”

“I heard you. What kind of stupid engineer designs a-”

“It’s a starship! It’s not designed like a comm link!”

“So you don’t have any long-range communications on that ship?”

“Of course I do! Built into the control dash, and augmented by my astromech!”

“But what do you do in this exact situation, where your dash and your astromech are fried?”

“Well, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I’d be dead in this exact situation. But between you and me, buddy,” Poe shifted sideways, rough bark scraping across his back but managing to lean closer without moving his neck, “I’m one hell of a pilot.”

FN-2187 chewed on his lower lip, clearly fighting a smile and also clearly exasperated as hell. “So these parts are useless.”

“They’re not useless! They’re very important.” Poe let a beat lapse. “They’re useless in their current form and position, though, yeah.”

“And you couldn’t have told me that earlier because…?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“And if I asked, you’d have helped me?” FN-2187 asked sarcastically.

“I mean…” Poe pretended to consider, loosely crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not gonna help contact the First Order, if that’s what you’re asking. I’d rather starve out here.”

“We’ll both starve if we don’t contact somebody.”

“So let’s contact the Resistance,” said Poe.

“Do you have short-term memory loss or something?” FN-2187 snapped back. “I can’t go to the Resistance.”

“Well, I can’t go to the First Order. What with the torture and certain death and all,” said Poe. Then he pressed further, when Finn let the silence lapse just a second longer. “Seriously, though, why not? If they left you behind, why be loyal to them? They don’t deserve it. I mean, you gotta know what they’re doing is wrong, right?”

“You shot two of my guys on your way down to the surface, you know,” said FN-2187, gesturing vaguely into the trees behind them. “One’s dead. So don’t give me that good-or-evil stuff, because I’m not stupid.”

Poe opened his mouth to fire off a retort and then closed it again. Saw the anger and the sadness, in those dark-matter eyes. Thought about the care and attention with which FN-2187 had cradled him the night before, held him while he shivered. Knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the soldier had died in his arms. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. It’s war.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“I’m sure we’ve killed some of your guys.”

“Yeah. A lot of them.”

“Not me, though,” FN-2187 added hastily, looking away. “I didn’t-- I mean, I haven’t--”

“I know,” said Poe, even though he didn’t really know what sort of combat the Trooper had seen. He did know that there was no possible way FN-2187 was responsible for Muran’s death, or any of the pilots under his command that he’d lost. He wondered if he could have managed to be as sympathetic, as friendly, as- ( _ stop that _ ) if his captor had been a TIE pilot.

“This is a war,” FN-2187 repeated.

“Yeah,” said Poe. And then, because he was who he was, he couldn’t stop himself from adding, “And there is a right side and a wrong side. And the First Order is the wrong side. Look, hear me out,” he raised a hand before the Trooper could protest. “It’s war, and people die, and people kill people, and we’re both sorry. But I don’t shoot civilians, okay? We don’t destroy planets.” 

“What about the Unvoss sanctions? Or the Anoat blockade? Is it really that different? There was famine across both systems, no access to medical supplies, they-”

“That’s not the same thing at all!” Poe exclaimed. “Look, I’ve got my problems with the Republic, but you can’t really believe that’s the same thing. Do you need a list of all the atrocities the First Order has committed? This year? Last year? It’s on a scale that--” Poe stopped himself, took another breath, and tried again. “You don’t know what I’ve seen. Or maybe you have, but you just don’t strike me as the kind of person who could see what I’ve seen, and still go back there. They don’t deserve you, Eff-Enn.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me,” said FN-2187.

“I know you’re a kind and decent human being, and the First Order-”

“Is made up of thousands and thousands of people. People are people, Poe. Some are good, some are bad, some are-”

“Yeah, and the people who are going to torture me are  _ not good _ !” Poe snapped, finally losing his patience. “So you might as well just shoot me, or give me the fucking tools so I can contact the Resistance and get us off this rock!”

FN-2187 clenched his jaw tightly, so tightly that Poe could see him shake a little with the effort. “I’m going to try to make a shelter for tonight.”

“You haven’t given me one good reason why you won’t just-”

But again, just like that morning, Finn snatched up his blaster and stalked off into the trees in the opposite direction of Poe’s ship. This time, however, he left the helmet sitting on the ground.

***

The shadows were long by the time FN-2187 returned from the trees, even sweatier and dirtier than he was at lunchtime. Clearly weary, he stumbled a bit in the underbrush, his head bent toward his feet, shoulders sagging, blaster barely held in his fingertips. 

The Trooper paused briefly at the edge of the clearing, watching Poe fiddle with the communication materials that had been left behind. Poe knew he was watching, knew he was calculating how long Poe had waited after FN-2187 had walked away before scooting across the ground to collect them. Taking note of the shape of the device that was being constructed haphazardly in his lap, evaluating how close it was to being completed. Poe pretended not to notice. He also pretended not to notice how the Trooper’s gaze moved to the helmet, still lying where he’d left it on the ground hours ago.

“We should move out,” FN-2187 said finally. “It’s getting dark.”

“Go on, then,” said Poe without looking up from his work. 

“What, and you’ll just stay here?”

“Yup.”

“What about your injuries?”

“I’m fully healed,” said Poe, snorting a little. “It’s a miracle.”

FN-2187 paused for a moment, chewing on his upper lip. “You getting that thing working?”

“Uh-huh,” Poe lied, even though he was nowhere near closer to establishing any form of long-range communicator. He hadn’t been lying earlier. As far as he knew, it wasn’t possible to do that with the pieces of salvage FN-2187 had separated from the ship, but there was no chance he would stop trying. “Just about got it.”

FN-2187 sighed, and shifted his weight. “I can’t go to the Resistance.”

“Okay,” said Poe.

“I know you think…” FN-2187 trailed off. He sounded utterly exhausted. “And it isn’t that I don’t...I mean, I know more than you think I do. I’ve seen...But you don’t understand the First Order. They don’t give up. And they don’t...” and he sighed. “It’s not a good idea.”

“I won’t tell them you’re here,” said Poe, still keeping his eyes on the partially-constructed device in front of him. “You can hide pretty easy, I won’t tell them. They’ll get me and my droid and take me back to base. You can live here as long as you want. I won’t give you up. Hell, I’ll bring you more supplies. I owe you that. You need anything, I’ll bring it to you. Or I’ll come back with a bigger ship and take you to the Outer Rim.” Finally, he looked up, and was somewhat stunned by the bare expression of hurt and betrayal on the Trooper’s young face. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. I owe you. But I can’t stay here.”

FN-2187 sat down on the ground. 

“You hungry?” Poe tilted his head.

He nodded, slowly, but didn’t make any attempts to move. He stared at the ground, vacant and weary and nervous and clearly trying to sort through a series of heavy thoughts.

“When was the last time you had some water?”

“Back at the stream,” said FN-2187. He glanced over at Poe. “How’s your leg, really?”

“You said it was a couple klicks?”

“Yeah,” FN-2187 nodded. “Maybe less.”

“I can make it,” said Poe. He sighed, wiped his forehead, and put the tools down. 

“So you are coming?” There was actual, honest relief in his voice, and Poe didn’t know how to interpret that.

“Yeah, yeah.” Poe wiped some of the engine grease from his fingertips onto his too-filthy-for-words flight suit and scrabbled a bit in the dirt to try to stand up. He ended up with a rock under his good knee, his grimace quickly turning into a whimper that Poe tried to cover with a more soldier-worthy grunt, and then FN-2187 was there under his arms again. “I can do it.”

“Sure you can.”

“It’s better than yesterday,” said Poe, letting FN-2187 guide him back to the enormous redwood tree for a final piss-break before they left for the new camp.

“Yesterday, it was in pieces.”

“Bacta’s the good shit, huh?” Poe wobbled a little, testing his balance, as Finn gathered up the med kit, the half-built communicator, and the rations box. “Here, give me that.” He held his hands out for the med kit and slung it over his shoulder. He tied the strings of his boots around the kit, and shoved a few tools into one of them. 

Thus laden and awkward, juggling too many items between too few limbs, they set out through the trees in the dying, orange light with their arms around each other. 


	3. Chapter 3

Poe could feel FN-2187 stirring next to him. He tried not to move, still curled onto his left side with an arm under his head, looking at the carefully balanced logs, stripped of their bark and lashed together with vine, that formed the walls of the little shelter FN-2187 had made for them. Blue dawn light was filtering through the cracks in the moss. The crinkling of one-half of the old emergency blanket as FN-2187’s hand lightly brushed against Poe’s shoulders when he reached an arm up to stretch, then a little whispered, “Sorry,” and a sigh. 

“S’time to get up?” said Poe, pretending to be more sleepy than he actually was.

“Yeah.” Poe heard a yawn. FN-2187 made another little grumbling noise as he lifted himself upright, then the familiar clicks of his armor being snapped back into place began (except his helmet; never his helmet, anymore). The shelter was only tall enough to sit up, just long enough to lay down, barely wide enough to accommodate their shoulders. 

Poe rolled to his back, watching FN-2187 put on his armor. He left it in a neat, semi-ordered pile at their feet every night, meticulously pulling off each plastoid piece and setting it in its proper place. Poe had been grateful for the depth of the darkness on this planet, where the sun was dim and far away, and there were too many satellites and tree shadows to properly reflect any moonlight onto their little campsite. It meant that he could watch FN-2187’s silhouette undressing down to that slim-fitting black underlayer without feeling too lascivious. After all, he could barely see him. Was barely watching. In the morning, it felt less charged without the possibility of that tiny point of warmth between their shoulders when they laid down next to each other to sleep.

They have been stranded on Zathi VII for eight days.

He forced himself to look up at the ceiling, stretching his own arms overhead as his half of the emergency blanket slipped to the ground. There was a piece of his X-wing (still vaguely black and orange, under all that charring) slung across the roof and covered with thickly-thatched branches full of still-green pine needles. It had only dripped a little water when a heavy rainfall blew through on the fourth night. The next day, FN-2187 had added more branches and moss, and when the sixth night’s sky began dumping sheets of heavy rain onto the forest floor, the roof hadn’t leaked a drop. Still, every speck of soil that wasn’t protected by the redwood canopies had been saturated, enormous drops crashing from the branches overhead or slamming into the ground just on the other side of the log walls. They instinctively slept in the middle of the shelter that night, shifting away from the walls, just in case the water seeped in through the ground or ran rivers under the wood. FN-2187 usually slept on his back, but that night he curled onto his side, so close that Poe could feel the warmth of his breath on the back of his neck and the ghost of his hand near his sacrum.

They never talked about that, of course.

“Need help?” asked FN-2187, yawning again.

“Nah, I got it,” said Poe. He creakily pulled himself upright, delicately balancing all the still-lingering aches and pains and bruises and sensitive places. He hasn’t needed help for a few days now, but FN-2187 still asked him every morning.

Poe’s neck and upper back had significantly improved, and he could almost move them freely. Getting up in the morning was usually the most painful, except for sudden jerks of his head or over-extension, but once the stiffness of another night sleeping on the hard ground had loosened in his muscles, he could manage. His leg, too, was rapidly increasing in mobility and slowly decreasing in pain as the bones knitted back together. It had ached terribly in the rain storms, and the bacta had long since run out, but FN-2187 had freed him from the splint three days ago and replaced it with a crutch he’d made from another tree branch, and Poe limped along well enough to take care of himself. He was quite sure he’d have that limp forever unless someone,  _ someone _ , finally found him and took him back home to D’Qar. He was trying to stop thinking about that so often.

“What’s for breakfast?” asked Poe, and it was a stupid joke, and he would have thought that FN-2187 would be tired of it by now, but he gave that same little chuckle that started their morning, every morning.

“Pancakes?” FN-2187 would say, and then Poe would say, “Pancakes and eggs? Maybe some sausage?” and FN-2187 would say, “Is there still caf?” and Poe would say, “I think there’s one cup, you can have it,” and FN-2187 would say, “How ‘bout we split it,” and Poe would say, “Deal,” and they would hide their smiles behind their dry and tasteless ration bars as they passed the canteen of water back and forth.

After breakfast, they washed themselves in the little stream. Sometimes, they’d strip to the waist, trying to scrape the grit and sweat from their underarms (Poe furtively looked, every time, couldn’t help it, pretended it was preservation instincts and that warning voice in the back of his head demanding that he come up with a plan to save himself, no other reason why he would watch the water running over FN-2187’s bare chest, shiver-bumps visible on his skin in the morning sunlight, and FN-2187 had never caught him in it, except maybe that one time). This morning, they merely splashed water on their faces and scrubbed their teeth with the pads of their fingers. Both their faces were scratchy with facial hair, but where FN-2187’s was an almost-distinguished curling wisp around his chin and above his lip, Poe’s was getting uncomfortably bushy.

Then Poe would try to spot-clean his filthy flight suit. Two days ago, they had fully washed all the clothing, including their underlayers, in an unspoken agreement that allowed them both to forgo commenting on the rank odor becoming increasingly pungent in the little shelter at night. They had gone to two separate bends in the creek, for privacy. But the heavy storm clouds had blown through before the fabric had fully dried, and they ended up damp and shivering in the little shelter as the rain pelted down, sitting closer than they’d ever sat before, just a hair’s breadth shy of huddling together. It had taken every single ounce of self-control Poe possessed not to put an arm around FN-2187 when his teeth started chattering ( _ What is  _ _ wrong _ _ with you!?) _ and then, with his warm breath on the back of his neck all night-

Poe nearly lost footing on his good leg, narrowing avoiding falling into the stream as he tried to collect water from the canteen. He could hear FN-2187 laughing at him. 

“Need help?” 

“No, I do not,” he grumbled as he sloshed up the bank with the canteen.

“Race you?” FN-2187 asked him, and that made Poe laugh, sticking his tree branch in front of FN-2187’s armored shins and pretending to trip him, which earned him a swat on the shoulder. They began to walk together to the remains of Poe’s ship. 

Sometimes, on the walk to the ship, Poe would tell jokes, or sing songs and ask FN-2187 to guess the artist (“Uh, PI-772 and the Interceptors.” “Close!” “The Chandrila Brigands.” “Oh, that’s a good one!”) as they went along. Sometimes, they would throw rocks at trees and taunt each other with complaints about cheating (FN-2187) and boasts about accuracy (Poe). Poe once hid behind a particularly enormous fern and waited until FN-2187 had doubled back to look for him, the panic and pitch rising in his voice as he called his name, until Poe leaped out and shouted at him. (“Why!?” he had demanded, clutching one hand on his blaster and the other to his heart. “I could have shot you!” “Your face!” Poe had cackled, leaning against a tree trunk). FN-2187 had promised to get him back, but he hadn’t yet.

This morning was a quiet walk. Poe was cold, and tired, and melancholy in a way he didn’t feel like covering with forced joviality. The little brown birds seemed to be singing particularly loudly this morning, or maybe it was the unusual quiet between then that let the silent spaces fill with that cheerful, lilting melody.

“Look, it’s following you,” FN-2187 pointed at one as it flitted to a nearby rock, fanned its tail, and opened its tiny beak to belt out another refrain.

“Probably just chasing the bugs under our feet,” said Poe.

The ship had finally dried out from its intense soaking during the other day’s rainstorm, but the fast-growing vines from nearby trees were already coiling their way into the lower engines and BB-8’s astromech socket. FN-2187 lingered at the base of the ladder with Poe’s crutch while he carefully hauled himself up into the cockpit, then laughed when Poe sputtered and frantically waved his arms to clear out the shining, dew-kissed webs that the fist-sized orange-and-white spiders constructed every night. They were always at the perfect angle to catch in his beard.

“You good?”

“Yeah,” said Poe, already digging into the control dash for the remnants of the wires he’d been rerouting the day before. 

“Okay. See ya later.”

“Bye.”

There was an uneasy truce of silence around what would happen if Poe actually did manage to repair the long-range communication capabilities of the broken ship. But since it hadn’t happened yet, and wasn’t likely to happen today, they continued to leave it for tomorrow. BB-8 was beyond repair without returning to base: too many overloaded components, shredded wires, dirt and smoke contamination. Poe talked to him while he worked, anyway. “What d’you think, Bee, should we try to demagnetize this sucker before we link it back?” Maybe his audial network was still functional, on some level.

At midday, FN-2187 wandered back to the crash site to share the water and present whatever food he’d managed to discover that morning. It was usually a spare, meager lunch. For all its lush plants and friendly bird life, the planet seemed to be rather devoid of edible options at this time of its cycle. FN-2187 usually brought back one foraged item that they’d already determined to be “safe” and one “experiment”: greenish-brown tuber roots (bland and unappetizing, but quickly added to the menu after neither of them died from the experience), pale orange flowers (stuck in the throat in a way that was concerning), dark pink berries (tart and delicious, but it was the only bush FN-2187 had found), thin leafy greens (took so long to chew that their jaws got sore, but they forced them down anyway). Today, he’d discovered some small, light brown, bulbous-looking fungi.

“I don’t know, Eff-Enn,” Poe said when he peered over the edge of the cockpit to look at them. “Mushrooms can be pretty poisonous.”

“I saw one of those fluffy things eating one,” said FN-2187. “There’s a lot of them, actually. I just thought they were knots on the tree for a long time.”

Once, early on, FN-2187 had brought back two of the little rodents that raced up and down the tree trunks with scratching claws and high-pitched chittering. They had soft, mottled gray fur and enormous fluffy tails. He had been oddly withdrawn that day, even for him. They were wrapped in a piece of fern leaf, almost reverently, and their little throats had been cut with such quick, gentle precision that only a single faded line of dried rusty-red blood colored the pale fur. Poe had assumed he’d stunned them first, but FN-2187 had looked so grave that he didn’t ask. And then he’d barely eaten a bite, after Poe had inexpertly skinned the creatures and cooked the meat. Poe almost felt the guilt radiating from his hunched shoulders (and was beyond intrigued, this soldier who was trained to shoot and destroy with First Order ferocity, broken up over the death of a rat). FN-2187 didn’t shoot another one, and Poe hadn’t asked him to. He’d had much better luck with fishing out the round, dark purple fishes in the stream, and it was currently their most reliable source of protein. But the fishes were small and cunning and easily startled by changes in the light, even though FN-2187 could move with stealth and silence. 

Poe worked for another hour or two while FN-2187 cataloged his forage and rested in the shade of the cockpit. 

“Any luck?” FN-2187 asked suddenly, which surprised Poe. He usually didn’t ask.

“Getting there,” said Poe, even though he had increasingly felt for days that it was a hopeless task without replacement parts or more specialized knowledge. “No idea if I’ll get a range outside of this system, though.”

“At least one of us knows something about it,” said FN-2187. There was a rattling sound as he re-capped the canteen. Then, after a long silence, he tapped the underside of the X-wing. “We better go, it’s getting late.”

“Right,” said Poe. He gathered up the tools and stowed them under the seat, resealing the repair hatch and trying to batten down the hatches as much as he could to protect it from the rain, as the transparisteel roof of the cockpit was shattered into pieces. Every time he stepped back to look at the damage to his ship, he was again shocked that he hadn’t died in the crash. That he was still here.

The sun set early, often falling into twilight soon after they arrived back at the campsite. Poe lit a fire from the half-charred remnants of the one the day before, and worked on preparing the “safe” foods while FN-2187 experimented with the new discoveries. Tonight, there were mashed tubers, made slightly more palatable by a scented herb the Trooper had found near the creek, a single ration bar split between them, and the mushrooms. They took only small bites of the mushrooms, which were chewy and earthy and would probably be fairly delicious with enough salt and fat, but they set the rest aside to eat cold in the morning if they were still alive.

Once, they saw a larger animal with short black fur and elegant, spiraling horns of iridescent pink silently slinking through the mist to drink from the stream, but it had bounded away before either of them could reach for the blaster. Poe couldn’t really lament the loss of such a tempting food source when he saw the look of wonder and happiness on FN-2187’s face as he watched the elegant creature leap into the fog. The next time it crept to the stream, Poe didn’t even try to suggest shooting it. He had found three of the little moss nests that the songbirds built in the trees surrounding the stream, watching them flit around in the dying light while he tended the fire. He often thought about the eggs, but hadn’t mentioned them yet. Surely, they’d be too tiny to bother.

He wondered how hungry they’d need to get before he collected the eggs, before FN-2187 would shoot the bounding creature with the spiraling horns or the fluffy-tailed rodents that leaped through the trees high above their heads. Probably soon. Not yet, but probably soon.

Poe always let the fire burn out earlier than he wanted to, and FN-2187 never complained. They used the torch sparingly, to save the battery charge. There were times when he would have liked the comfort of the warmth and light of the fire to last longer into the night, but even with his increased mobility, he couldn’t do much to help gathering wood or breaking up kindling. They only had FN-2187’s single knife, daily going more dull at its overuse, and a single repurposed piece of durasteel to lay across the fire for cooking. Even the fire had become Poe’s responsibility almost as a consolation prize, given how little else he could do. Much of their basic survival was managed by FN-2187. Poe found that he didn’t mind that so much, found himself falling into line behind his direction without argument or hesitation more often than not. He wasn’t sure if that was in respect to his vague prisoner status, or simple recognition that FN-2187 was a clear and natural leader. Or how much he had given up, or how much he didn’t want to think about giving up.

And then they were repeating the morning’s ritual in reverse, Poe settling onto his side of the shelter, surreptitiously watching FN-2187 disconnect the plastoid plates of his armor to reveal the true outline of his broad shoulders, the slopes of his thighs.

“So, what’s my bedtime story tonight?” FN-2187 asked as he lay down, propping his outer arm under his neck and shifting the dirt to get comfortable.

Poe snorted a little, glad of the dark to hide his blush. Most nights, he filled the long, dark silence with stories: adventures from his travels before the Resistance (vague on the geographic and illegal details), funny stories with Rapier Squadron (though never any with Muran), that time that Snap had tried to Declare his Feelings with Cake, BB-8’s territorial pissing match with the Resistance’s grumpiest Gonk unit. The Trooper was an excellent listener. He gasped and groaned in all the right places, asked the perfect sarcastic question in just the right way to tee Poe up for the punchline, sometimes curling over his stomach at how hard he laughed. He’d occasionally ask a clarifying question (he hadn’t known what sweetapple cake was, or what a Sullustan looked like), but he soaked up the stories like he’d never heard anything like them before. Which, Poe realized after a little while, he probably hadn’t.

FN-2187 didn’t tell stories. Poe would ask sometimes, trying to sound innocuous, curious, not prying, but the Trooper closed off with the slightest questioning. Defensive, mostly; embarrassed, sometimes; and always with that hint of base sadness that he covered well and Poe could see increasingly clearly every day they spent together.

Tonight, though. Tonight, Poe didn’t feel like telling stories. Tonight, he was still hungry, and his feet were always cold, and his neck was hurting again, and his leg always hurt at the end of the day, and he didn’t want to limp around this forest for the rest of his life, which might be shorter than he’d expected, and he hadn’t expected it all to end quite this way. Maybe the Resistance had stopped looking for him. Maybe they were too busy and out-numbered to spare any more pilots for search and rescue, and what if they were under attack right now? 

“I don’t know, Eff-Enn,” Poe finally said, letting out a sigh. “Think you’ve heard all my best stories by now.”

“Really? That’s it?” said FN-2187.

Poe chuckled half-heartedly. “Yup. That’s it. Everything else is boring.”

“I kind of doubt that’s true.” Then he nudged their shoulders. “I don’t think you could be boring if you tried.”

“Recon missions usually aren’t this exciting,” said Poe. “Spend seven hours in hyperspace in a steel can, fly around for a little while, take measurements, count ships, try not to get caught, spend another seven hours going back. Then sleep for six hours and do it again.”

FN-2187 made a dismissive sound. “Uh huh, try this one. Stand in one place for five hours. Sometimes, shift to the other foot. Once an hour, report to command. You never have anything to report because the only people who live on this base are First Order and the only people you see are Troopers and officers. Take a five minute break, eat a ration bar, then stand in a different place for another five hours.”

Poe winced. “Yeah, okay, that’s boring as shit.”

“Yup. Not that I mind, really,” said FN-2187. “I’d rather clean a control panel or guard a stupid corridor all day than…” And then he stopped himself.

Poe waited, but when it became clear that FN-2187 was not going to speak further about any possible First Order missions, he nudged their shoulders together again. “Hey, don’t worry. Who’m I gonna tell, right?”

“Oh, I get it,” said FN-2187. “You’re just working on that communicator to get out of doing any real work, right?”

“Right,” Poe agreed readily. “You can deal with all the fish guts.”

They hadn’t moved their shoulders apart, after the nudging. Even through Poe’s flight suit and FN-2187’s undershirt, it was soft and warm at that point of contact. Poe tried not to focus on it too intently. 

“You’ve been pretty quiet today,” said FN-2187.

“Thought I’d give you a break from all the...” said Poe, spinning his hand in a rough approximation of his usual rambling trajectory.

“You seem...sad.”

Poe thought that over. “Guess I am.”

“Why?” Then, tentatively taking another step across that bridge they never crossed, “Do you miss the Resistance?”

“Yeah,” said Poe.  _ I want to go home. _ “I’m worried. They should have found me by now.”

“Even without the communicator?”

Poe nodded. “Yeah. They knew where I was going to recon, they would have sent someone to find me when I didn’t check in or come back. And sure, there’s a lot of moons and planets in this system, but it wouldn’t take that much to trace the ion trail from Black One’s engines down to the crash site. But no one’s come yet.” He chewed on his lip, shifting to cross his arms over his chest, breaking that warm spot between their shoulders. “Even if they think I’m dead, they should have tried to come get my body. For my dad. I’m just worried something happened.”

“Your dad?” FN-2187 shifted sideways, propping himself up on his elbow. There was something a little hungry in the way he said it. 

“Yeah,” Poe closed his eyes. “I don’t even know if anyone’s told him yet. About…” and he gestured to the ceiling, the scratched-up black and orange paint on the durasteel. (How had FN-2187 lifted that thing up on his own, anyway?)

“Would he be looking for you?”

“No,” Poe shook his head. “No, probably not.”

“Why not? You don’t get along?”

“If they contacted him, it probably means they’ve given up looking for me,” said Poe. “He knows what that means. He knows the risk.”

“Is he a pilot, too?”

“No,” Poe shook his head. He hesitated, but it was dark, and he was lonely, and suddenly so homesick he thought he might burst out of his skin and let his spirit levitate back to Yavin IV. “My mom was a pilot.”

“She’s not anymore?”

“She died.”

FN-2187 was quiet for a while, digesting that statement. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” (It wasn’t.)

“Did she...was it like this?”

“Shot down?” Poe raised an eyebrow at him, knowing they couldn’t really see each other’s expressions, even with how their eyes adjusted to the darkness. “No. The Rebellion was over by then.”

“She was in the Rebellion?”

“Both my parents were. They helped take down the second Death Star,” Poe smiled. 

“The Death Star,” FN-2187 repeated.

“Yeah, they tell you about the Death Star, right?”

“Of course.”

“Yeah, of course. Everybody knows about that. What’d they tell you about it?”

“...It had weaknesses.” 

“Well yeah, it wasn’t finished. Big gaping holes everywhere.”

“Half a million soldiers died.”

“What?” Poe looked over sharply.

FN-2187 looked up at the ceiling of the little shelter and recited, “There were 200,000 Troopers on the second Death Star, 250,000 officers and staff, communications, mechanics, pilots, all that. And then another 50,000 construction workers and contracting crew. You know, ‘cause it was still being built.”

“Right,” Poe nodded, swallowing carefully. “I...I’d forgotten that.”

“Yeah, I bet your parents didn’t talk about that part.”

Poe looked over again, gathering himself to strike back and defend their honor and heroism, but then he realized there was no accusation in FN-2187’s voice. No sarcasm, no righteousness. And it was true. They hadn’t liked talking about that part. “They honestly talked more about trying to get back to me. They were both pretty worried they’d be killed, and then I’d never know them.”

FN-2187 nodded a little. “I guess that’d be hard. For a parent.”

“What were yours?”

“My parents?” There was a brittle defensiveness in his voice, mixed with a little hunger again, another step on the bridge, and Poe waited through the pause, fully expecting him to shut the conversation down. But then, “I don’t know. I didn’t know them.”

“They died?”

“Probably. No one knew. We were part of the Trooper program. Your family is your squadron, you know?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Poe shook his head. “Wait, so when did you join up?”

“I didn’t join anything. I was part of the Trooper program.”

“I don’t understand.”

“One time…” FN-2187 started, and then he trailed off. Poe waited. Then he started again. “One time, one of the others started waking up every morning saying he’d had a dream about his parents. FN-2219, he was younger than everyone else. He said maybe that was why he could remember them and no one else could. He’d wake up every morning before the alarms went off and say, ‘I had another one!’ And everyone would just crowd around and he’d tell us about it. I don’t know if they were supposed to be memories or...or something else, but it was all weird stuff. Like, he said sometimes they’d come up to his bed and put blankets around his shoulders, and like-” FN-2187 made some gestures at his sides.

“Tuck him in?” Poe supplied.

“Yeah, I guess. Is that real?”

“Yeah,” said Poe, nodding and swallowing down a lump in his throat. “Yeah, it is.”

“Huh,” said FN-2187. “It sounded weird. Anyway, okay, so maybe he was right. But there were a bunch of those. They’d put blankets on him, or the next night, there’d be some song they sang to him. And I always thought he was making it up, you know? He’d sort of hum it, and it didn’t really seem like a song. I thought he was making it up. Because we’d been in that room forever. That same bed, that same dorm, those same people. We were always together.”

“How old were you?”

“There’s nothing before the Trooper program. At least, I don’t remember anything,” said FN-2187, which wasn’t exactly an answer to his question.

They lay there in the dark, quietly, for a while. “What happened to FN-2219?” Poe finally asked.

“He wouldn’t stop talking about those stupid dreams,” said FN-2187. “And then other people started insisting they were having them, too.” The shadow of a shrug. “They wouldn’t shut up about them. They were starting to get upset. Like they really believed it. Captain Cadmar had to start sleeping in the dorm with us so people would stop talking about it, but you can’t stop that kind of thing once it gets out of control. And the First Order doesn’t like being out of control,” FN-2187 chuckled a little. “Anyway, all the Troopers who wouldn’t shut up about their stupid dreams got put on the same training team for the next excursion, and there was a malfunction and their shuttle blew up.”

“A malfunction,” Poe repeated.

“Yeah.”

“How old were you?” he asked again.

“I don’t know,” said FN-2187. “Seven? Six? I was still in-”

“You were  _ six _ !?” Poe couldn’t stop himself from squawking.

“I told you, there’s nothing before the Trooper program.”

“I can’t call you Eff-Enn anymore,” Poe said suddenly, sitting up from the ground.

“What?” FN-2187 rose up, too.

“FN-2187. I can’t call you that anymore.”

“Why not?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” He sounded offended, or maybe closer to wounded, and Poe hurried to explain.

“It’s a bunch of letters and numbers. It’s...it’s like you’re a serial number. Just part of their-- their program. It’s not a name.”

“Aren’t all names just a bunch of letters?”

“Not like that. I’m not PO-1234 or whatever.”

“Why is that more wrong than Poe? A name’s a name, what does it matter?” said FN-2187, still sounding defensive. 

“I shouldn’t have said wrong,” said Poe, even though he still deeply felt that it was. “But you’re a person. You’re not a droid, or a tool, or a-”

“You talk about your droid like you care about him.”

“I do care about him.”

“And what’s his name?”

“BeeBee-Ate. But that’s exactly my point, I love him and all, but he’s a droid. You’re not. You’re a perso-”

“I thought you said once he was your best friend,” said FN-2187.

“Well, yeah,” said Poe, feeling flummoxed, “But that’s not-”

“So your best friend is a droid, and it’s okay that he has a serial number for a name, but I’m a Stormtrooper, and that’s not okay? Is it because I’m your enemy? I don’t get it.”

“Did your parents name you FN-2187?” Poe could hear the sharp inhale of FN-2187’s breath through his nose, even if he couldn’t see his jaw tense. “We both know you’re not my enemy anymore, Eff--” and then he stopped himself.

“And we both know that I don’t know what my parents called me,” said FN-2187. “So I don’t really care what anyone else calls me.”

“What about Finn?”

It was very dark, and very quiet, in the little shelter. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, not like that, not suddenly at the end of this frankly all-too-revealing conversation, but it was too late to take it back now.

“What about it?” FN-2187 finally asked, but he didn’t sound angry. He sounded a little curious, a little guarded. A little hopeful.

“Finn,” Poe repeated. “I thought...you know, Eff-Enn, it could be Finn.” He shifted, worrying at the torn fabric of his flight suit just above his bad knee. “I’ve kind of been thinking about it for a while now.”

“Thinking about...?”

“Calling you Finn.”  _ Making you real. Making you a person. Not an enemy, not a number, someone here with me. (You’re the only one here with me.) _

It was quiet, again, for a long time.

“Do you like it?” Poe pressed. “Because it doesn’t have to be that, I just thought...it was just in my head.”

He could see the barest shadow of a nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I...I do like that.” And then, testing it out, very quietly, “Finn.”

Poe couldn’t help the grin. “Okay. Okay, good. Good to meet you, Finn,” he said, putting his hand into the dark, empty space between them.

Finn breathed out a little chuckle, and clasped it. His hands were always warm, even as cold as it got late at night, warm and dry. “Good to meet you, too, Poe.”

Poe pulled him forward by the hand, and kissed him. Finn tensed, his entire body went rigid, but he didn’t move, and Poe didn’t move, and their lips stayed pressed against each other: warm, and soft, and dry. Finn didn’t kiss him back, but he didn’t move away. Poe pulled back just enough to see that his eyes were closed, to glance down at his mouth, tilt his head the other direction, and kiss him again. Their hands were still clasped together and Poe knew he should probably stop, knew this was probably long past the time when he should take the message from the lack of reciprocation, knew this was probably madness and loneliness and the need to feel something other than worry and fear and pain. But Finn wasn’t moving away. He still wasn’t kissing back, but he breathed in slowly, through his nose, cooling that spot on Poe’s cheek where their faces angled for the kiss.

Finally, Poe withdrew. “Had that in my head, too, for a while,” he said, looking down.

“Why’d you do that?” It was accusatory, almost angry, and much louder than they had been talking before.

“Sorry,” Poe said immediately, shrinking away from the tone and breaking their hands apart. His stomach dropped, coiling in shame, as he pushed himself against the far wall of the hut. “Sorry, I...I shouldn’t have. Sorry.”

He could feel Finn’s eyes on him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look up. And then Finn was on his feet and out of the shelter, leaving his armor in a pile by the entryway with his boots.

“Shit,” Poe let out, stumbling after him. He was much slower, of course; getting his bad leg to cooperate was an ordeal, and it wasn’t possible to move quickly with a crutch. By the time he’d squeezed out the shelter door, their little campsite was empty in the dim moonlight. “Finn!” he said, and then he shouted it. “FINN! Come back!"

No response.

Finn didn’t come back that night. 


	4. Chapter 4

Poe barely slept. 

In the morning, when he stumbled out of the shelter at the first sign of barely-visible light, their campsite was still empty. No sign of Finn. Poe paced back and forth in front of the circle of campfire stones for a few minutes, trying to determine a course of action. Trying not to be too worried. His mind didn’t cooperate with that goal, of course, and kept supplying him images of heretofore undiscovered carnivores gnawing on leg bones; a broken back at the bottom of some hidden ravine; a trigger-happy First Order patrol. Poe didn’t bother to keep calling for him, though. Finn knew these woods now. He spent his days walking in them; seemed to have a natural sense of direction and an eerie ability to find plants and water. He hadn’t come back because he didn’t want to come back.

Poe sighed. He looked at the cold mushrooms in the tray, the nearly-empty ration box. Then he turned and began to limp toward his ship. He wasn’t hungry. He left the canteen by the campfire, though. Just in case. It was Finn’s, anyway.

He didn’t say a word to BB-8 the entire morning. He worked furiously, digging into the control panel to pull at wires he hadn’t been able to reach before, somehow squeezing himself further into the nose of the ship regardless of how it pinched his shoulders or put too much weight on his bad knee. He was singularly focused in a way he hadn’t been since the crash: get the communicator working. If Finn was in trouble-- ( _ He’s not in trouble, you just screwed up. _ ) He hadn’t seen or heard even so much as a footfall all morning ( _ okay, so maybe you’re a little rusty with the kissing, it’s been a while, but it can't have been  _ _ that _ _ bad) _ , but there wasn’t anything he could do to help right now. Or should do. He couldn’t find him, and he shouldn’t ( _ yeah no kidding, you shouldn’t have-- What were you  _ _ thinking _ _!?) look _ . But he could get the communicator working. He had to get this done.

Something sparked. “Ow!” He immediately withdrew his hand, sucking on the little electrical burns at the tips of his fingers. He was about to reposition the pliers to twist the live wires out of the way of these power couplets when he paused. He heard static. 

He shot up so fast that he nearly hit his head on a jagged pane of transparisteel suspended overhead from the broken hatch, pliers clattering to the floor, to activate the comm. “This is Black One. Repeat, this is Black One, does anyone copy? Over.”

Static. Static and interference, the signal fuzzy and distorted, but something had connected in the bowels of his ship. Poe tried to stay calm. “Repeat, this is Black One. I’m down in enemy territory. Does anyone copy? Over.”

More silence. The static got louder, briefly, and then faded again. Poe began one more time, “This is Black One-”

_ “Poe? Poe, is that you!?” _

“Jess?”

She yelled so loudly, Poe thought that the internal wiring had exploded or a First Order ship lying in wait had leaped out to ambush her. Just when he was about to have a proper panic, another, deeper voice joined.

_ “Dameron! You lucky kriffing bastard, where are you? Are you all right?” _

“Snap,” said Poe, and he rested his head on the control panel for a moment, completely and entirely overcome with relief and exhaustion and far too many other complicated feelings. He could hear some of that emotion hang heavy in his voice, even through his smile, when he asked, “You guys are really here? Is the First Order-”

_ “Sorry it took us so long, boss. They’ve been patrolling this system for days now. Clearly hoping we’d come looking for you.” _

“Have they seen you? Snap, maybe you guys should get out now, I doubt this channel is secure enough to-”

_ “Don’t worry! They bugged out this morning,” _ said Jess. Her voice was pitched high and raspy, in that way it did when she was emotional and trying to fight it.

_ “We’ve been popping in at the edge of the system in a comm blackout, scouting a few satellites, then popping out again before they can catch us,” _ said Snap _. “It’s been driving them crazy.” _

“Well, you better hurry. They might be planning to do the same thing.”

_ “Where are you?” _

“Zathi VII. Little one, lots of green.”

_ “Copy that, we’re on our way. How bad’s your ship?” _

“It’s scrap,” said Poe. “Took me eight days to get the comm system working again, and I’ve been sleeping under a piece of the wing two klicks away.”

_ “Ha! Snap, you owe me twenty credits!” _

Snap groaned.  _ “Another goddamn bird, huh Dameron? You know, they’ve got landing gear…” _

“Very funny,” Poe rolled his eyes. His grin was so wide now that his mouth was hurting. “Just get down here, okay?”

_ “Can’t wait to see your castaway beard,” _ said Jess. _ “Is it taking over your entire face?” _

Poe laughed. “I think Papa’s been keeping secrets, this thing is clearly half-Wookie. Oh hey, BeeBee-Ate’s down, did you bring that shuttle with the magnetic winch or-”

A blaster bolt seared across the top of the cockpit, splintering the jagged piece of transparisteel overhead into a dozen flying shards. Poe leaped back into the seat, throwing his hands across his face, just barely registering the panicked voice calling,  _ “Poe!?” _ through the comm before the blaster fire began striking the dashboard and control panel in earnest. Sparks and wires flew everywhere; Poe had to scrunch down in the narrow space between the seat and the far side of the cockpit, burrowing into a protective ball. As he listened, he began to register that this was not a single blaster attack; there were several, at least three, all firing at once. 

Finally, the arsenal ceased, leaving only the faint hissing of smoking wire and melting transparisteel.

“Put your hands up!” a harsh, demanding voice shouted from below the cockpit. “Hands up, now!”

_ Plan plan plan think of a motherfucking plan _ \- but the blaster fire was already raining down again, this time concentrating on the cockpit itself, slowly burning holes through the durasteel as each blast melted down another layer. The durasteel behind his back was getting hot to the touch. “Okay!” he called over the noise, and then shouted, “OKAY!”

The firing stopped. “Hands where I can see them!”

Poe put up his hands.

“Higher!”

“They’re straight up in the air, what more do you want?” he snapped back.

“Stand up slowly, and keep your hands raised.”

Slowly, achingly, nearly falling over twice, Poe managed to unfurl himself out of his protective huddle and shift onto his good knee. Standing up was an ordeal; transparisteel shards littered the seat and he was still wobbly, but the moment one of his hands dropped slightly to steady himself as he picked around the debris, another warning shot was fired into the trees above his head. 

“I said, hands where I can see them!”

“I’m trying, asshole! I broke my damn leg in the crash!” Poe shouted. When no one responded, with either words or blasters, he took a halting step toward the ladder and looked down over the edge of the cockpit.

Four Stormtroopers in shining white armor, perfectly cleaned and polished, were standing with blasters raised. All four weapons were pointed exactly at his heart. “Keep your hands up and come down slowly,” said the Trooper in the front, clearly the one in charge.

“Okay, take it easy,” said Poe. He took his time shuffling around this time, regaining his footing, stalling to see if his brain could catch up to the situation enough to give him something useful to try. Once he reached the edge of the cockpit, he waved one hand. “I gotta put my hands down to climb out.”

“Throw down your weapons. Down here on the ground,” the Trooper gestured with his blaster.

“I don’t have any weapons.”

“I said, drop them!”

“And I said, I don’t have any!” said Poe. “Do you see any weapons? Do I look like I have weapons?”

The Trooper thought that over, and then he nodded. “Get down here. Now.”

“All right, all right,” Poe grumbled. “What’s got you so impatient? It’s a lovely day, there’s birds singing in the trees-”

“Get down now, or I’ll shoot you in the head,” said the Trooper, raising his blaster and aiming it.

“Okay! Okay, I’m coming down.” Poe planted his feet carefully, and there wasn’t any sort of stalling for time now as he gingerly climbed down the ladder out of the cockpit. His right leg was pulsing with pain in a way he hadn’t felt since the crash, presumably objecting to being crushed against the cockpit floor all day and then curled against the seat during the firefight, and Finn usually helped him down the ladder when it got this sore (even when he insisted that it was fine,  _ really, it’s fine, I’m fine _ ).

They grabbed him by the back of the flight suit before his feet touched the ground, wrenching his arms behind his back and shoving him to his knees. “Ow, fuck!” Poe let out, trying not to collapse completely. “I told you, I broke my goddamn-”

“Shut up,” said the lead Trooper, giving him a solid whack across the side of the face with the armor-plated back of his hand. Then he made a brief gesture to the Trooper directly to his left, and Poe was forced face-down to the ground. He tried to crane his neck behind to get a glance at his captors, but one of the Troopers kicked his forehead back down to the ground as another one coupled a pair of binders on his wrists. Then there was a knee pressing hard on his back. 

“What took you so long?” Poe asked the dirt. “We could have done this days ago.”

“Shut up,” said one of the other Troopers, a woman. She kicked him in the cheek this time, breaking the skin at the edge of his lip.

“Rude,” said Poe, licking at the blood dribbling into his mouth.

“Where is this Resistance base?”

“Oh, now you want me to talk?” Poe snorted, and then coughed a little when he inhaled a bit of dirt from the ground.

“Get him up,” said the lead Trooper, and he was once again hauled to his feet, groaning now from the rough treatment and the strain that the tight binders immediately put on his neck and shoulders. 

“Up, down, talk, don’t talk, make up your damn mind already,” said Poe. 

The lead Trooper smacked him again. Poe let his body weight tilt back as he absorbed the blow, leaning too heavily into the arms of the Troopers holding him upright, and then immediately shifted forward again, testing their balance, testing their hold on his shoulders. The one on his right faltered and he nearly slipped loose, but the left gripped harder, and all he managed to do was scuffle in the dirt to keep from falling down again. They kept his arms in a vice-grip after that. Poe shifted his shoulders a little, almost playfully, as the lead Trooper approached him again. Then he slowly bent his head down and spit a combination of dirt and blood onto the shining white toes of the lead Trooper’s boots. He smiled.

The lead Trooper paused, only briefly, to look down at the reddish-brown spittle on his boot, and then raised the butt of his blaster, arcing it directly toward Poe’s forehead.

“Nines!” came a shout at the edge of the trees. The lead Trooper halted his assault, looking behind him, and when Poe followed his gaze, his breath caught, his stomach shrank, and every muscle in his body tensed.

FN-2187 was marching through the clearing. Poe would know those shoulders anywhere, even if it weren’t for the scratched-up plastoid armor, coated heavily in brown dirt and grass stains from the creek (Finn had been trying to weave a mat out of that grass, while he waited for the fish to notice his bait, and he had smiled so wide when he showed Poe the first lopsided square). He was wearing his helmet. He had his blaster in hand. 

"What are-" Nines began, still aiming the butt of his blaster in the general vicinity of Poe's nose, but FN-2187 cut him off immediately.

“Is the  _ Finalizer _ back in range?” asked FN-2187, and that was when Poe’s heart fell straight through the hole in the leg of his flight suit and onto the pine needle-covered ground with a dull splat. He felt very, very stupid. 

"Where have you been?” Nines demanded in return, ignoring the question entirely.

FN-2187 grabbed the blaster Nines was pointing at Poe’s face and forced it down and away. “Working. Where’s Zeroes?”

“He’s dead,” said Nines. He jerked the blaster back out of FN-2187’s grasp and re-positioned it toward Poe’s chest. “Died of his wounds because  _ this piece of scum _ had to-”

“He was shot in the back,” said FN-2187, and Poe could hear the frown in his voice. “It looked serious but not like it hit any major organs, how could he have-- didn’t you get him to medical? I told you to get him to medical.”

“What are you doing here?” asked Nines, again ignoring the question and barking out one of his own. “You said the pilot was dead, and then you went AWOL.”

“How is it AWOL if you know exactly where I am?” said FN-2187. “And I said he  _ appeared _ to be dead. I figured the Resistance was running surveillance on our comm systems, how else could they have-”

“The Resistance just made contact on  _ this _ comm system!” Nines pointed his blaster up to the wreck of the X-wing cockpit. “How was the prisoner able to access communication systems, Eight-Seven?”

“So Resistance ships are incoming?” asked FN-2187, helmet glancing skyward.

“They’re gone,” Poe lied immediately.

Both FN-2187 and Nines turned to look at him, but Poe could only look at the ground. “They heard the blaster fire, they know I’m compromised. They’ll have jumped away.”

“Back to your base?” asked Nines, casually aiming his blaster just under Poe’s chin.

“New base,” Poe answered, barely thinking of it as a lie. More like a hope. “Standard precaution in the event of probable capture. S’why it took them so long to come looking for me. They’ll already be gone.”

“And the old base was…?” The blaster moved a little closer to his chin.

“That’s classified.”

The butt of the blaster smashed into his forehead, then, and Poe dropped to his knees. Dazed, wincing at the pain in his right leg, too many hard jams to the ground, and then he was falling forward. His heart must have still been beating a little, even with the blood soaking into the pine needles beneath his feet, because he knew the feel of that armor pressed against his chest, those shoulders holding up his chin, and the smell of his skin in the small gap between the helmet and the collar around his neck. Knew that it was FN-2187 who caught him before he fell on his face. “Finn,” he mumbled, and then he let himself rest. He knew what was going to happen next.

***

At first, Poe barely felt his feet touch the ground as he was half-dragged, half-carried through the trees northwest of the crash site. He had never gone this direction before, although he assumed FN-2187 had in his searches to find food. (Or, more likely, Poe realized with another sinking feeling, to check in with his superiors.) Soon enough, though, the Troopers must have noticed him regain some level of alertness; maybe it was the audible sigh of relief when they hoisted him around a large boulder, or when he scrabbled at a fern with his good leg to avoid scraping against the rough bark of a redwood tree. Whatever it was, he started receiving less support and more threats.

"I said, move!"

"Oh yeah, I’m really excited to get where we’re going," said Poe, rolling his eyes. “The Resistance will not be intimidated by a couple of walking piss buckets with shitty aim. I’m not giving up anything you want to know, so you might as well just-” 

Nines abruptly turned from his point-position, looked straight at him (and even with the helmet on, Poe could have sworn he saw something smug in his eyes), and fired his blaster directly into Poe's leg, just above the knee, in nearly the same place where Finn had pressed and pushed and screamed his bone back into place two weeks before.

After moaning through the pain for a moment, Poe gasped, "Well, now you'll really have to carry me," pulling on the binders in a futile attempt to follow instinct and press a hand to the wound.

"That was completely unnecessary," said FN-2187, disapprovingly, from somewhere behind him.

“Shut up, Eight-Seven,” said Nines. “I’m squad leader now.”

FN-2187 sighed a little and said, "Come on, Poe," as he shuffled around to Poe's side and tried to edge out the Trooper holding tight to his upper arm. The guarding Trooper stayed firm and elbowed him back.

"Stay away from the prisoner," Nines snapped over his shoulder. "Two-Two, keep an eye on him. I don't trust a damn thing he says.” 

"Yes sir," came the voice of the last Trooper, the woman with the hard boots, and Poe spared a glance to see her training her blaster on Finn.

“In fact," Nines paused to regard them both in turn, “One more word from either of you, and I’m cutting the whole leg off. Understood?” After a pause, “Eight-Seven?”

“Sir, yes sir,” said FN-2187 in a low, tight voice.

Too many names, nicknames, designations, pain. Finn, Eff-Enn, Eight-Seven...Too much confusion. Poe couldn't think straight, and let his thoughts wander as they dragged him through the heavy underbrush of fern and vine. Was he one of them, or wasn't he? He’d reported to the First Order that Poe had died, he had tried to heal his injuries, he had helped them stay alive. But now he was marching alongside in his armor, obeying orders. He’d tried to build a new communicator. He’d let Poe try to repair the ship comm. He had consistently refused to seek help from the Resistance. He had refused to kiss him back.

Poe scanned back over all of their conversations, trying to remember his exact words and phrases, the vagueness and the open-ended responses. Had he just assumed that Finn was changing his mind, as they lowered their guards to stay alive? Poe already knew that he’d mistaken basic kindness for something more, was he so convinced of the First Order’s universal evil that he’d blinded himself to the idea that someone as kind as FN-2187 could still be loyal? Was he  _ that _ stupid that it still seemed impossible to comprehend? 

He was too exhausted and overwhelmed to reach any conclusions by the time they bushwhacked to the clearing where the First Order had landed their shuttle. It was a squarish, gun-metal gray ship with stubby wings. There were two pilots, pressed black uniforms and saucer-shaped helmets, crowded around an open panel next to the boarding ramp.

"What's going on?" Nines called to them, picking up his pace.

"We're not sure," said one of the pilots. "Maybe an animal got into the wiring?"

"What? How?"

"I don't know," said the same pilot, clearly irritated. "But the primary conduits to the antigrav thrusters have been completely cut off. Emergency power only."

"Well, fix it. I want wings up in fifteen minutes," said Nines, stomping toward the boarding ramp.

"I'm not a mechanic," said the pilot.

"What?"

"That's not my designation."

"I don't care what your designation is, just fix it!"

"They don't know how," said FN-2187 tiredly. "That's not part of their training."

"How would  _ you _ know?" Nines turned to him.

"You'd be surprised what you learn when you actually talk to people," said FN-2187.

Nines stood quietly for a moment, clearly trying to get a hold of himself, and then he pointed up into the ship. "Get him up and locked. Then contact Captain Phasma and inform her we have the pilot. And a possible traitor."

"Unfortunately..." the second pilot began.

"What  _ now _ ?"

"Communications have also been damaged."

"We have no communications, no power, Resistance ships in this system, and you think it was an animal?" Nines spoke very quietly.

"The little fluffy climbing things really like to chew on wires," said FN-2187, almost helpfully. 

"Get him on board," Nines snapped, pointing up the ramp and then grabbing FN-2187 by the shoulder to push him to the side. "Listen up, Eight-Seven. I don't know what you-"

The shuttle was small. It had two seats for the pilots, and the rest was open space. Dark durasteel bulkheads, lit only by the flashing red low-power warnings from the emergency generator. There was a narrow, square compartment at the back of the holding area, which Poe assumed at first was a detention cell. Then the Troopers began shackling him to the back wall, spread-eagled, coupling a single metal band across his chest to distribute the weight, and he decided it was more likely a small refresher. Which would have been nice to use before being chained to a wall for the indeterminable future. His leg was throbbing.

Nines and FN-2187's argument was raising in volume enough to be heard inside the shuttle.

“You can disagree all you want, but I kept a high-value target alive until someone bothered to come back for us."

"Alive? He looks a little better than _ alive _ . Did you even interrogate him?"

"That wouldn't have worked."

"Oh, we'll see about that."

"He's extremely loyal to the Resistance, you won't-"

"Zeroes  _ died _ while you were down here playing doctor with the enemy."

"And whose fault is that? I told you to get him to medical!"

"And you had orders to get the location of the Resistance base! Ren wants that target, Eight-Seven. Starkiller will be ready to fire within the week, and there won’t be anyone to oppose the strike on Hosnia if the Resistance is eliminated first. You-"

“You hear that?” one of the Troopers guarding him stepped into his line of sight, blocking Poe’s view of the forest outside the shuttle doors and the rest of the conversation. “Kylo Ren wants the base. Might as well give it up now. You know he can take whatever he wants.”

“Seeing as how he’s up there, and we’re stuck down here, I’m not too worried about it,” said Poe, even as the creeping dread filled his stomach. He’d heard the stories of what Kylo Ren could do. Had done. Would do. 

The Trooper chuckled a little, exchanged a glance with the shorter Trooper to the side, and threw his fist directly into Poe’s solar plexus. 

“Oh, we’re starting this now, huh?” Poe wheezed once he could breathe again.

They took turns beating him for a minute or two, landing a punch to his side here, another bruise on his cheek there. Poe tried to go limp and let his mind wander, thinking about the exact number of steps it took to walk from his D’Qar quarters to the mess hall, how many doors he passed on the way there, how many warming trays were in the line, what they’d served the morning before this recon mission, and then his pilots,  _ his pilots _ , he could almost see them sitting at a table and laughing...and then he remembered Snap, and Jess. He wasn't sure whether to hope that they were coming to rescue him, or if they really had fled the system. It would have been smarter to flee. Maybe they had been caught already. 

And then he couldn’t stop himself from crying out when that damn Stormtrooper with her damn boots stomped on his damn, cursed knee. Footsteps immediately sounded up the boarding ramp, while Poe was absently wondering whether bacta and Kalonia’s surgical team would be enough to fix the bone if it was crushed. Not that he was going to see Kalonia's team again.

“What are you-” FN-2187 started, and then he yanked one of the Troopers back by the arm and snapped, “This isn’t going to help!”

“Where is the Resistance base?” Nines demanded. He grabbed Poe’s chin in a hard, forceful grip to tilt it up and leaned down very close. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

“Are you gonna kiss me instead?” asked Poe. “Cause I’m not that desperate.”

“I keep telling you, he’s-”

Something exploded outside, a blast of hot air rocking the shuttle on its landing clamps, and one of the pilots shouted. Two of the Troopers immediately ran back down the ramp, blasters firing into the trees, while the third stayed to plant herself between FN-2187 and Poe. 

“Looks like the fluffy things are back to finish the job,” said Poe, spitting something out of his mouth that he avidly hoped wasn’t a tooth. Maybe just a piece of one. ( _ Can bacta regrow teeth? _ ) He tried to hit the toe of Nines’ boots again, but he failed. 

Another explosion, this one even closer to the open shuttle doors, rocked the floor under their feet before Nines could make good on further threats. “Get out there!” he pointed at the Stormtrooper and FN-2187. The last Trooper was already on her way down the ramp, nearly tripping over the body of one of the pilots as it thudded to the ground in front of her, shot in the back in his attempt to run onto the shuttle.

“I said-” Nines started, taking a step forward FN-2187, but he didn’t finish. FN-2187 lifted his blaster and fired in a quick, fluid motion. Nines flew to the back wall, narrowly avoiding a collision with Poe’s outstretched left arm, and fell in a crumpled heap at his feet.

And then Finn’s helmet had clattered to the floor, along with the still-smoking blaster, and he was hurriedly unlocking the binders around Poe’s wrists.

"Wait, wait, wait,” said Poe, staring dumbfounded at him. “You were...I mean, weren’t you?”

"Your friends are coming to get you," said Finn, holding one hand under his shoulder while he unlocked the binders holding his other arm to the wall. 

Poe could hear the exchange of blaster fire between the trees and the last Trooper at the base of the boarding ramp, trying to look for a glimpse of Resistance orange. “Snap sabotaged the shuttle?” 

“...No,” said Finn. He knelt down to unlock the binders around his ankles.

“You?” Finn didn’t answer, so Poe tried, “Did you know they were coming?” He wasn’t entirely sure if he meant the First Order shuttle, or the Resistance rescue.

“I didn’t know what to do.” Finn looked up at him, briefly, but not quite meeting his eyes. He sounded almost embarrassed. “I didn’t think they would waste the fuel to come back for just me, but then I guess they-- I mean, I didn’t have a plan or anything. Stuff just...happened.”

"Come with me," said Poe. 

Finn made a dry-sounding chuckle, shaking his head. "I don't want to be a prisoner any more than you did "

“Not a prisoner,” said Poe. “You’d be a hero. You saved me.”

“I can't go to the Resistance,” Finn shook his head again. “The First Order's never going to stop hunting me, after this. I need to disappear.” He looked up, really looked up this time, and Poe was again struck by that feeling of deep space and dark matter. Those eyes were limitless. “You need to move your base for real.”

“What's Starkiller?” Poe asked, then he groaned a little when his body fell out of the last restraint and into Finn’s arms. They shifted back so Poe could rest against the wall, taking all the weight off his right leg. He let his eyes close. Finn’s warm fingertips were gently caressing his face, inspecting the injuries, finding the bruises and wiping away the sweat mixed with blood.

“It's why you need to move your base,” said Finn. “It’s like the Death Star. It can destroy an entire planet, all the way from Ilum.”

Poe opened his eyes and stared at Finn until he could catch his gaze again, brief, fleeting. “Come with me. Help us take it down.”

“I don't know how to take down Starkiller!” said Finn, incredulous. “I’m just a soldier. And not a good one, I’m a traitor-”

“You’re a good man, Finn,” said Poe, and he gripped Finn’s wrist and held it steady. He didn’t mean to look down. This was serious, this war, it wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t a dark little hut in the middle of a moonless night, alone in the woods. This was covered in blood with the bodies of Stormtroopers littering the floor, and apprehension in Finn’s eyes, and a new weapon to fight, but he couldn’t help it, and then he couldn’t stop. “Come with me,” Poe said again, looking at Finn’s mouth.

“Poe, I…” Finn started, and then he hesitated. Stared at Poe’s mouth, then the blood on his cheek, the abrasion on his forehead. Finally meeting his eyes, without trying to look away.

Then, the blaster bolt hit him squarely in the back.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hold on, Finn,” Poe repeated for the fiftieth time, tossing the soaked, bloody medpac into the corner with the others and hastily unwrapping a fresh one. This was the last medpac on the ship. He pressed it against the bleeding wound in Finn’s back and resumed lightly stroking Finn’s bare shoulder with his other hand. The Stormtrooper armor had managed to distribute some of the shock of the bolt across the plastoid, but there was still a gaping hole in his skin that burrowed down to his shoulder blade. More bone, more blood. “Just hold on. We’re gonna get you to a doctor.”

“I’m really sorry,” Jess said from the other side of the cargo hold, bent over the box of medical supplies and digging for more bandages. BB-8’s charred chassis watched them mournfully, his optical lens dark and empty. 

“Don’t be,” said Poe. He shifted a little and tried not to wince at the pain caused by...well, any movement at all, really, between the new bruises forming over the old ones and the blood soaking through another medpac wrapped around his knee. Finn was unconscious, with his cheek pressed into Poe’s left thigh, half-cradled between his legs in a sprawled heap of bruised and bloody limbs. “I know what it looked like.”

Poe had been yelling, possibly screaming, possibly in something close to panic, tearing the plates of Finn’s armor off piece-by-piece when Snap and Jess had run up the boarding ramp from the cover of trees to rescue him.  _ (“Help me! Where’s the ship, we gotta get him back to-” _

_ “Poe, that’s a Stormtrooper.” A gentle hand on his arm. “You’re safe now, everything’s okay.” _

_ “His name is Finn, no time to explain, just help me get him on the shuttle! That’s an  _ _ order _ _ , lieutenant!”) _ He hadn’t missed their exchanged looks of concern and distrust. But they had done as he said.

“He was with all the other Stormtroopers,” said Jess. She’d repeated this several times now, whenever there was silence to fill. “And you were...I mean, you look pretty roughed up, Dameron.”

“I know. I woulda done the same thing,” said Poe. “How much longer?”

“Nearly there,” she said, walking on her knees to Poe’s other side and pressing a bandage over the open cut on his forehead. “It’s a short jump. I’ll make sure there’s a hover transport waiting as soon as we drop to sub-light.”

“Hear that, buddy?” Poe said, putting more pressure into the wound. “Just a little longer, and everything will be fine.” 

Jess sat down cross-legged, within arms reach of the open box of supplies. She was clearly expecting him to say something; presumably, to explain. To tell her the whole story. To catch her up and fill her in and reassure the lingering doubts about what had happened and why they were transporting a bleeding First Order soldier back to D’Qar instead of leaving him on Zathi with the rest of the bodies. “Is he one of us?” she finally asked.

“He’s not one of  _ them _ anymore,” said Poe forcefully. “That’s all that matters.”

“I guess,” said Jess, nodding a little. She closed the box of supplies and dusted off her hands, eyebrows furrowing and trying to flatten a frown into a thin line. “You two have been stranded together for nearly two weeks, huh?” 

“Yeah,” said Poe. 

“Just you two?”

“Yeah?” Poe raised an eyebrow, very uncertain where this line of questioning was heading. “What’s your point?”

“Two weeks,” she said, fixing him with a hard stare. “Just you. And him. On a planet. All alone.”

Poe tried to fight the blush, tried not to look down at the man in his lap. Maybe he could blame the color on the blood, and his beard hopefully covered the rest. “It’s not like that.”

“It’s not?” she asked. “Then why’ve you got your hands in his hair?”

Poe jerked, hardly realizing that one of his hands was, in fact, gently stroking through Finn’s short, curly hair. He retracted it, quickly, stammering, “I’m just-- I’m-- that was--”

“Uh-huh,” said Jess. She was still fighting a frown. “I guess we’ll see what the General makes of him.”

“He’s got valuable information about the inner workings of the First Order,” said Poe, trying to keep his temper in check and not to snap at her. “I don’t know what you-- Force, Jess, he saved my life!”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Jess raised her hands. “And I know it’s probably none of my business. But just...be careful, Poe.”

“Of what?” Poe blinked at her. “He’s wounded. He’s not going to hurt anybody.”

“He’s a Stormtrooper,” Jess repeatedly, a little sadly.

“He’s  _ not _ one of them.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s-” Jess started, and the proximity alerts began beeping in the cockpit. She sighed, clasping her hands prayer-like in front of her. “Poe, I’ve seen you do this before. You run right into trouble, without even thinking about what could go wrong, and what if you’re-”

“He saved my life,” Poe repeated.

“Okay,” she nodded several times, clearly ready to let the matter drop. “Okay. We’re with you, boss. I’m just going to-”

“Have Kalonia waiting,” said Poe curtly, even though Jess had already promised she would. Poe took several breaths as Jess disappeared into the cockpit, until the clench of his jaw started to unlock, and he could glance down at Finn’s closed eyes. “Don’t worry, Finn,” he said quietly, in a way he hoped was private and reassuring. “You won’t be a prisoner. I’ll explain everything to the General, and anyone who’s got a problem after that will have to go through me. Okay?”

He leaned back against the wall, staring into the dead space near BB-8. “And you don’t have to stay,” he forced himself to add, without looking down. “I meant what I said before. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. If you want to go.”

“I never said I  _ wanted _ to...” Finn murmured quietly against his leg.

“Hey,” said Poe, trying to stay very still. He looked down, but Finn’s eyes were still closed. “Hey, don’t move. We’re almost home.”

Finn shook his head a little. “You shouldn’t take me there. Might have trackers.”

“We left your armor on Zathi.”

“Doesn’t matter. Might have trackers.”

“Blaster wound first,” said Poe. 

“You shouldn’t be mad at your pilot,” said Finn. “She’s just trying to look out for you.”

“Yeah, they’re always doing that,” said Poe. “It’s really annoying.”

“Well, they don’t want you getting mixed up with any unsavory characters.”

Poe chuckled. He felt warm, again, and not just where Finn’s skin was pressed against him. “Sure. The big, scary Stormtrooper who doesn’t like shooting rats.”

“They were too cute to be rats.” Finn finally opened his eyes, turning his head slightly to look back and up into Poe’s face. “You okay?”

“Me?” asked Poe. “You’ve got a hole in your shoulder, and you’re asking about  _ me _ ?”

“Your face is all bruised up.”

“My face will be fine, Finn. You're the one who got shot.”

“You got shot, too.”

“So we’re a matched pair,” said Poe, shaking his head and resisting the urge to touch him. “Just...Force, it's your turn, okay? Relax. I’m fine.”

“If you say so.” 

Poe could hear Jess jabbering over the comm as the broke atmo, coordinating her landing instructions and medical teams. Distantly, he heard Snap chiming in once his X-wing joined them out of hyperspace. ( _ “We got him!” _ A fuzzy distortion of cheering, multiple voices talking over each other at once.) He realized he was smiling. Those voices, that hint of blue and green in the corner of the transparisteel cockpit he could just barely see; one step closer to relief, to this being  _ over _ , one step closer to mechanics for BB-8 and flying high on painkillers, and a few hours of rest before they geared up for whatever the hell Starkiller was going to be. Almost home.

He glanced down again, intending to share the story of the time he’d spent two days in the bacta suit after the Ojilon Syndicate tried to rob their fuel convoy, but saw that Finn was anxiously chewing on his lower lip, eyes darting back and forth across the empty floor of the cargo hold before settling on the bay doors. “What's wrong?” 

“You're not going to space me, right?”

“What!?” Poe’s eyes went wide.

“Just checking.”

“Finn, I am going to take you to the medbay myself.”

“You too, right?”

“What?”

“They’ll give you medical attention, too?”

“I mean, Kalonia’s gotta catch me first, but-” Poe’s expression softened when he saw the look on Finn’s face, and he patted his shoulder. “I’m kidding. She’ll probably put me in the bed next to yours, so you can hear her yelling at me. She’s going to blame me for all of this, you know,” as he gestured to his own face. “That should be fun for you.”

Finn smiled again, then it faltered. “Zeroes got shot, just like this. His back.”

“Was it-” Poe started to ask, and then he stopped because he knew the blast had come from his ship. Finn had told him so.

“They just let him die.” Finn was chewing on his lips again, hand clenching, staring at the shuttle doors without blinking. “They space them or they let them die, or they leave them on planets to starve.” 

“Yeah,” said Poe.  _ Fuck you, First Order.  _

“They’ll kill you, too. They’ll kill all of you,” said Finn. “For all you know, I could have something planted in my brain tracking this ship back to your base, transmitting our position right now.”

“I don’t care,” said Poe.

“You shouldn’t have brought me here. I’m putting you in danger.”

“I don’t care,” he repeated.

Finn looked at him carefully. “You will if they-”

“We don’t leave people behind,” said Poe, staring him down. “You’re people. No way was I gonna leave you there, with them.”

“So this is a rescue?” Finn looked up, and the edges of his mouth were twisting in that tiny little smile.

“Sure,” said Poe. “Your turn.”

“Ugh, save me, they’re actually pretty cute,” Jess suddenly said, loudly, from the cockpit.

“Jess, what the-”

_ “Cute? Wait, are you saying that Poe and the-” _

“He insisted it wasn’t like that, but you know how he is,” said Jess.

“I can hear you!” Poe hollered up to her. 

“Good!” she shouted back. “I’m rooting for you crazy kids!”

“Cut it out, Jess.” He was really blushing now, glad that his hand had already been extracted from Finn’s hair. “Ignore them,” he told Finn.

“What did you mean, it wasn’t like what?” Finn pressed.

Poe immediately looked away. “Don’t worry about it.” 

“Oh. You kissed me,” Finn said, as though he’d forgotten it until that moment. 

“I said, don’t worry about it.”

“What? Why?”

“You obviously didn’t want me to. That’s kind of a problem.”

“That’s nowhere on our list of problems, Poe.”

Poe groaned out a little chuckle, and scratched the back of his head, matted with dirt and pine needles. “Well, I think it kind of qualifies to be on the list of  _ my _ problems when someone I like doesn’t want to kiss me.”

“Does it help if I wish I had?” asked Finn.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you?” Poe asked, and then he shook his head. “You know what? Doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?” Finn’s gaze was fixed on him, catching him, drawing him closer. 

“Nah,” said Poe. “I’m up for a do-over, if you are?”

Finn’s smile was mixed with befuddlement. “What, right now?”

“No time like the present, right?”

“You’ve got a split lip, a broken leg, a black eye, a-”

“Like I said,” Poe shrugged. His hand was in Finn’s hair again. 

“Your pilot thinks I’ve brainwashed you,” said Finn.

“Not anymore. She’s rooting for us now,” said Poe. “I wear everyone down, eventually.”

“You’re just that annoying, huh?”

“Oh, it gets worse,” said Poe. “How ‘bout it?”

Finn slipped into his secret smile, and then he nodded, almost imperceptibly, and Poe bent down (craning his sore neck, an awkward angle, blood and dirt and tree sap in his hair) and kissed him gently. “Ow,” as Finn’s lips dragged against the scrape at the edge of his mouth.

“Sorry,” said Finn, smiling a little wider now.

“Do it again,” said Poe.

Finn lifted his head off of Poe’s lap to kiss him this time, and then broke the kiss when he tried to move his arm, grunting a little from pain.

“Bet this is the most uncomfortable first kiss you’ve ever had, huh?” asked Poe, grinning like a lunatic.

“Not me!” Jess called from the cockpit.

“Thanks for the contribution, Jess!” Poe shouted at her.

“It’s not our first kiss,” said Finn.

“Well, it’s the first time you kissed me back, and you can’t physically run away this time, so I’m-”

“I was lying to you,” said Finn, shrugging with his uninjured shoulder. Poe tried to position the medpac under the wound so he could rest back against Poe’s thigh, without removing his hand from Finn’s hair. “Or, I wasn’t being honest, anyway.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” 

Finn breathed out a small laugh. “I didn’t know what to do,” he admitted after a moment. “I didn’t know what to do next.”

“They don’t do kissing in the First Order?” asked Poe, letting himself work a gentle thumb across his forehead.

“Not really, but that’s not what I-”

“Guess the helmets kind of get in the way.”

That yielded a proper chuckle. “Yeah.”

“More?” Poe asked brightly.

“Really?”

“It’s either that or pass out,” he shrugged. “Though I haven’t brushed my teeth in a while.”

“S’okay,” said Finn. “You taste more like blood than anything else.”

“Wow, you two are weird.”

“Thanks for the contribution, Jess! Buzz off!”

“I’m serious, Dameron!” Jess was gleeful. Poe wouldn’t have put it past her to be broadcasting this conversation to the rest of the fleet, the General included. “You had to go to the goddamn First Order to find someone as weird as you. It’s perfect. I’m fully on board.”

“I'm putting you on supply runs for a month,” said Poe, trying to ignore Finn’s gentle laughter. “Can't you just close that door or something?”

“Only you would be thinking about sex when you both have blaster wounds.”

“No! I just want to-” Finn slid a hand across his scratchy, bearded cheek, drew him down, and kissed him again. “Do that.” Another kiss. One more, and then the angle was too awkward, and he was starting to worry again about blood loss from cauterized laser wounds in Finn’s upper back and his cursed knee, and they had clearly both completely lost any semblance of sanity to even  _ think _ about kissing right now, especially illustrated when he tried to shift his leg to get some circulation back into his toes and got a jolt of pain for his trouble. He was, all things considered, extremely happy.

“I really like you, Finn,” he said, leaning back against the wall.

“I like you, too.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” said Poe. He stroked through Finn’s hair again, looking to the side to catch another glimpse of green through the cockpit window. “Nearly home now.”

“Home?” Finn sounded skeptical, but maybe, he hoped, also a little intrigued.

“Yeah,” said Poe. He glanced down; Finn was still looking up at him, and he smiled. Gently slid the hand out of Finn’s hair to lace their fingers together, resting on his chest. “Nearly there.”

They stayed that way, bloody, bruised, slumped in the cargo hold of an old rusting shuttle with a shiny new hyperdrive engine, BB-8 silently standing sentinel and Jess making jokes on the comm, until it landed at the edge of the D’Qar tarmac with a heavy, comforting lurch. They helped each other to their feet before Jess had finished her post-checks, waiting with their arms around each other as the shuttle bay doors slowly descended and let in the bright light of D’Qar.

Poe heard birdsong. He couldn't have said that he knew the melody before, but it was instantly familiar. 

“Here we go,” he said, and led Finn out into the sunshine.


End file.
